The Legacy of Callisto Part 4: Round Perdition's Flames
by Tabard
Summary: As Cronus' Spartan army marches northward to war, accompanied by the cult of Followers and a strange new threat, Callisto returns to the city of Delphi where she must face the consequences of her actions, and the judgment of those who have every right to hate and fear her.
1. Prologue: Styx and Stones

DISCLAIMER

First of all, the characters of Callisto, Xena, Gabrielle and any others from the TV shows Xena: Warrior Princess or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys are the property of Universal Pictures, Renaissance Pictures, and other affiliates. This work is intended purely for entertainment and nonprofit purposes, and no copy right infringement is intended.

* * *

 **The Legacy of Callisto Part Four**

 **Round Perdition's Flames**

* * *

 _'This misfortune you find is of your own manufacture._

 _Keep hold of what you have, it will harm no other,_

 _for hatred comes home to the hand that chose it.'_

 _Simon Armitage_

 _The Death of King Arthur:_

 _A New Verse Translation_

* * *

 _'I see fire,_

 _hollowing souls.'_

 _Ed Sheeran_

* * *

 **Prologue: Styx and Stones**

Such was the stench of the river, one could smell it before one ever saw it. Even Zeus, King of the Gods and lord upon high of Mt Olympus itself, was forced to crinkle his nose as he proceeded carefully through the drifting banks of mist that surrounded him. Pausing for a moment, he hitched his brilliant scarlet and gold robes slightly, then continued to pick his way forward over the uneven, rocky ground, all the while treading carefully with his sandaled feet to avoid the various small pitfalls and ridges that could easily result in his most distinguished presence taking a most undistinguished spill.

All about him the mists curled, thick, featureless, and completely impenetrable to his gaze. The further he went, the more he could feel the changes taking place deep in the core of him, his guts lurching and churning in the same way they did for a man in freefall. But Zeus was not falling. He was transitioning, moving between worlds, and the feeling in his stomach was one of dimensions shifting and reality thinning as he drew ever closer to the barrier that separated the world of the living from the realms of the dead.

It would be all too easy for even a god to become lost in the miasma, doomed to wander for all eternity in the never ending twilight of this place where the power of one's will was the only real protection, and where even those strong in such could still lose themselves, their sense of self draining away, drip by precious drip, until it was lost entirely. It was a terrible fate to contemplate, especially for a creature of almost complete ego like an Olympian, but for Zeus, the smell of the river was enough to hold onto and to have guide him through the transfer.

Somewhere out in the mist, he spied darkness gathering. He paused once more, eyeing the mist suspiciously from beneath heavy silver brows. There were worse things than entropy lurking out there in the nothing, and where the barrier had once held them well at bay, trapped between worlds like worms crawling between rock and dirt, its recent weakening had emboldened them.

Energy crackled around Zeus' fingers, sparking and hissing as it leaped from one fingertip to the next in small, stinging arcs. The light of it pushed the gathering shadows back into the mist and Zeus gave a nod of satisfaction, the static nimbus all about him dying with a quiet sizzle before he turned and started on his way once more.

Normally he would not have risked himself this way, traveling between worlds in the manner of a common mortal when he could have just as easily willed himself from one to the other in the blink of an eye. To do such placed pressure on the barrier however, and considering how dire the situation in Hades' Underworld had grown of late, a little extra caution was worth the inconvenience.

Beneath him, he felt a rumble run through the ground causing the stone to groan under the strain. It was an all too familiar event this rumbling, albeit one he had not realised was already stretching out this far. The fact that it was actually reaching him even in this strange limbo space was more alarming than he cared to admit, so without any further delay, he hitched his robes still higher and quickened his pace. The ground began to curve upward in a shallow ridge line, and as he crested it, the mist fell away almost completely, as if it had never even been. Glancing back over his shoulder, Zeus had to suppress an involuntary shiver. The mist hung eerily behind him, cut off at the crest of the ridge in an unnatural sheer line, as if it were pressed up against some invisible force that prevented it from rolling down the slope. Within it he could spy the shadows once again, creeping and crawling as they feasted on the remnants of his passing and the echoes of sensation he had left behind.

Taking a deep breath and turning back, he was equally disturbed – if not even more so – by the sight in front of him. He was standing in a vast cavern, a dark ceiling of natural stone overhead barely visible in the gloom of the place, and up ahead it did actually disappear from sight, arcing up and up and up until it was lost in the darkness. The smell he had noted was all the more pungent here, and peering down the slope he could easily spy the source of it. At the bottom of the slope, and across a short plain of hardened volcanic rock, there was the wide and festering river Styx. So wide was it that it almost appeared to be an ocean rather than a river, with its opposite bank only just visible to the naked eye, and that was thanks mainly to a series of torches that had been lit on a distant dock.

That distant dock's twin was close at hand. A long pier – made of a hardwood that Zeus could never remember as not having appeared rotten – jutted out into the waters for a good fifty metres or more, and all around it stood the spirits of the dead. There were literally hundreds, if not even thousands of them hemming in on all sides of it, while scores more hovered in great milling crowds along the banks of the river. Zeus frowned. Why were there so many? He had made this trip before on occasion, the last time being when he had seen Callisto's spirit back to the world of the living several months before, and in on all those occasions, he could not remember there ever being more than a single trip's worth of the dead awaiting passage.

Raising his gaze back to the Styx, he could just make out a single boat, manned by a lone figure, hunched and hooded, and poling his way in toward the dock. Charon. Right on schedule too. The crotchety boatman whose job it was to carry the dead from one side of the Styx to the other was so dependable you could have told time by him, had time itself not been a meaningless concept within Hades' domain. If that were truly so however, then why was it that that the irascible boatman seemed so overworked today? Zeus had a feeling he knew the answer, but it would not hurt find out from the horse's mouth.

Starting down the slope, the crowd seemed to instinctively part for him as he approached. Zeus paid them little mind as he passed, other than to note that toward the rear of the crowd, most appeared confused, not yet truly comprehending the reality of their situation, while the closer to the river he came, the more that sense of dawning realisation and horror began to creep over them. By the time he reached the dock itself, and with Charon's boat now in full view, those closest to the water's edge were becoming more and more agitated. Not a one of them would set foot out onto the pier.

There were only two people out on the dock, both of them with their backs' turned as Zeus approached. One was tall, clad all in black with a sword at his hip and thick, dark hair that hung to his shoulders. His jaw was the shape of an anvil and he had shoulders that would make a herd of bison envious. Beside him, the other individual was smaller in stature, but still solidly muscled. A woman, she was dressed in golden leather armour with a sectioned skirt, a flared full glove on one hand, and a three fingered archers glove on the other. Despite her archer's gear, there was no sign of a bow anywhere about her. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail, and held out of her face by a leather band around her forehead dyed the same shade of gold as her armour.

Neither of the two had turned to face him, but Zeus could feel that they were aware of him regardless.

"You're late," the dark man said.

"Or you're early," Zeus replied, stepping up beside them as Charon's boat made its final approach to the dock. "Which one is true? Who's really to say?"

Ares just grunted in response. He had been particularly sour of late.

"I think what Ares is trying to say is that we've been waiting for quite some time," the woman standing between them said.

Zeus gave her sideways look. Artemis was one of the most even tempered of his children, which was to say she did not immediately resort to patricide or backstabbing when another member of the pantheon offended her.

"Good," he said, looking back to Ares. "He could stand to learn a little patience. We all could. Eternity is on our side after all."

Ares turned and fixed him with a baleful glare and was opening his mouth to speak when a wet and gurgling cough echoed up politely from the water's edge.

"'Scuse me," Charon said as all eyes turned to him, "but am I interruptin' somethin'?"

The creaky old boatman was standing at the prow of his ferry, the pole he used for pushing his boat across the Styx upright in the water with him propped up nonchalantly against it.

"Not at all," Zeus said, shooting Ares a sideways glance. "We were just discussing the exact nature of punctuality."

Charon cocked an eyebrow at them, then straightened before stepping up onto the dock with a tired grunt.

"And the judgment was?" he prompted, settling his moldering black robes about himself.

"That time is a fluid thing," Artemis said lightly, ever the peacemaker as she stepped between Ares and Zeus. "And that its passage is a matter of perspective. Isn't that right father?"

Zeus gave her a half smile.

"It is indeed," he said.

Charon eyed them both then gave an impatient grunt.

"Well, I perceive that _my_ time's bein' wasted then," he said. "In case you hadn't noticed, I've got quite the back log to get through milling about over there, and there ain't nothin' I hate worse than a late finish to a long day."

Ares gave the ferryman a disdainful look.

"There are no days down here," he said.

Charon fixed him with long suffering stare.

"Try pullin' double duty across this river after one of those little spats you enjoy starting so much leaves the bodies piled high, War God, and then try tellin' me there's no such thing as hard day's work down here."

Ares groaned, not wanting to get drawn into a grouching match with the crotchety old boatman.

"Can we just get this over with?" he said, turning back to Zeus. "Did Hades send him to fetch us or not?"

"He did indeed," Charon answered before Zeus could speak. "Told me to take time out of my busy schedule to ferry a couple of Olympians across to him. Was hardly expectin' the great God of War himself to come slummin' it this way though. If I'd know I'd have brought out my special boat. The one with the velvet cushions and chilled wine straight from the barrel."

His voice practically oozed sarcasm, as he flashed Ares a sly, yellow toothed grin. Ares just rolled his eyes in response.

"Orders is orders though," Charon continued, "and Hades wants you all brought before him toot sweet. So if you could just hurry along and hop aboard; the sooner I've got you across, the sooner I can get back to my real business."

He nodded again, this time in the direction of the crowds of people milling at the edge of the dock as Zeus, Ares and Artemis stepped past him onto the boat.

"You folks just wait right there!" the boatman called out to the crowd. "I'll be back for some of you in two shakes of Cerberus' tale. And don't go wanderin' off now, y'hear! You wouldn't want to be getting' youselves lost on this side o'the river. Not if you value your immortal souls that is..."

At that last part, the crowd of the dead huddled closer together, their eyes darting left and right warily, as if something were about to reach out of the ever present gloom and snatch them away.

"Was it really necessary to scare them all like that?" Artemis asked as Charon joined them on the boat, hefting his pole again and starting them out over the river.

Charon shrugged.

"Maybe not," he said. "But there's an inventory and checklist that needs followin'. Can't be havin' them wanderin' off and gettin' 'emselves lost now can we. Them's that do that won't get themselves an afterlife after all."

Artemis frowned and glanced back over her shoulder as the boat drifted away from the dock.

"Why are there so many of them anyway?" she asked. "I admit I don't come this way that often, but I don't ever remember it being quite so crowded before."

Zeus listened intently. He already knew the answer of course, but he was interested to hear what Charon made of it all. Most of the other gods dismissed the haggard boatman, thinking him uncouth, unkempt, and not terribly bright. Zeus knew otherwise however. Charon was much sharper than most gave him credit for.

"It's crowded for the same reason that you're ridin' in this boat with me," Charon said, glancing at her slyly. "Too much pressure on the barrier from your side these days. It's weakenin' 'cause of it, 'n things you'd all rather not let loose on this side are pushin' back too. 'S the reason that the river here's so shallow."

Both Ares and Artemis glanced over the side of the boat, studying the Styx intently for the first time. Charon was right of course. His pole did not even sink up to a third of its length into the turgid sludge that passed for the river. If one had been of a mind to, and could abide the stench of it, they would have quite easily been able to wade across.

"Been a lot of death in the world recently," Charon continued, "A lot of souls tryin' to cross over. Can't let 'em all do it at once. Not 'n keep the barrier standing, so me and Hades came up with a plan. Decided it was best to ship 'em over piecemeal, a bit at a time."

"But that can't last," Ares said, nodding back toward the bank. "The bank's too narrow. Sooner or later, they'll be forced into the river on foot to cross it, and then the barrier will fall."

Charon just shrugged as he continued his poling.

"I never said it was a _good_ plan," he said. "But then I leave that kind of thinkin' to greater minds than mine."

He gave Zeus a pointed look that the King of the Gods pretended not to notice.

For a while there was silence, the only sound the wet splish-splosh of Charon's pole rising and falling as the boat slid across the surface of the Styx. When they were only a hundred metres or so from the opposite shore, Ares straightened, stepping up behind Charon at the boat's prow and peering out into the darkness toward the horizon. A warm glow had appeared there.

"Is that..." he began, and Charon nodded.

"Tartarus," he said, his voice low and hushed. "The fissures are spreadin' out further every day. They'll be at the river soon."

"And what happens when they reach it?" Artemis asked.

"You'd all know better 'n me," Charon replied. "It's your grandpappy causin' it after all."

By the time they reached the opposite shore, not only had warm orange glow grown and deepened, but thick pillars of acrid black smoke had also become visible against the darkness, billowing up out of the fissures of Tartarus and disappearing into gloom overhead. The boat glided quietly in alongside a second dock, this one made of slightly sturdier wood than the one they had just come from. Charon hopped up onto the dock with surprising agility for one so seemingly decrepit. In a single movement, he laid his pole to one side, and began to tie the boat off to a pair of mooring cleats mounted along the dock.

"Well, this is your stop," he said as the gods stepped up out of the ferry. "I hate to run, but you saw what I'm up to my neck in today, and quite frankly haulin' you folks over was the one thing I'd rather not have had to waste time on, so if you'll excuse me..."

Ares just ignored the boatman, but both Zeus and Artemis gave him a polite nod. Charon gave a final grunt in return before stepping back down, untying the moorings, and pushing his way back out onto the Styx again. It did not take long before his own efforts and the river's current had carried him well clear of the dock, humming a gruff and tuneless melody as he left the gods standing alone at the gateway to the Underworld.

"So now what?" Ares demanded irritably. "We just sit here while the world to comes crashing down around us?"

Zeus sighed.

"We wait," he replied as patiently as he could manage. "Your uncle is far too experienced a host to leave us unattended for long. There's no need for haste."

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Ares snarled as he turned back to glare at Zeus. He waved his hand in the direction of the pillars of smoke rising from various points across the horizon. "You think we have time to waste? Look how far this has gone! Cronus is almost free, and still you're ordering us to sit and do nothing!?"

"Not nothing," Zeus replied with a shake of his head. "We're here after all aren't we? Ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hades, and face to face with my dear father should the worst come to the worst."

Ares threw up his hands in frustration.

"I give up!" he groaned and shot Artemis a look. "You talk to him. He might see sense if it's coming from you."

Artemis glanced between the two of them as if trying to judge who she should side with, before finally turning her gaze to Zeus.

"Please father," she said in that diplomatic way she had. "You have to admit that this has now gone further than even you ever suspected it would."

Zeus turned his attention back to Artemis.

"Am I really that transparent?" he said. "How do you know that all that has happened so far hasn't been part of my plan from the beginning?"

"Because you're here with us, and not safe up on Olympus," Artemis reasoned. "If you had nothing to fear, why even entertain our concerns? You never have before."

Zeus gave her a warm paternal smile.

"You see Ares," he said without looking at his son. "Look how far a little empathy and insight can take you. You're quite right, Artemis my dear. This _has_ gone further than I thought it would. But at this late stage, I fail to see what else we can do but stay the course."

"The course that _you_ set us on!" Ares bit back sharply. "I warned you father. I _told_ you-"

"Told me what?" Zeus interrupted, turning a hard glare back at Ares, his eyes suddenly grey like an ocean storm. "That I was wrong? Mistaken in judgment perhaps? Forgive me if I chose not to listen. After all, there's seldom a day that goes by where I'm not questioned in some form or other by each and every one of the pantheon. I've learned to make my peace with it. What I cannot abide however, is meddling."

"Not this again!" Ares folded his huge arms tightly across his chest. "I've had no contact with Callisto since your last scolding. Everything that's happened since then has been entirely of her own doing."

"Has it really?" Zeus said, shifting his gaze back to Artemis once more.

It took Ares only a moment to realise what his father was driving at.

"Are you saying..."

"... That I wasn't talking about you?" Zeus said, not taking his eyes from Artemis. "Quite so."

For her part, Artemis did not bow or scrape under their combined attention. Instead, she simply crossed her own arms and stared back at them both defiantly. In that moment, the brother-sister resemblance between she and Ares was almost uncanny.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said firmly.

"Oh, I think that you do," Zeus replied, his voice hardening. "If I recall correctly, I ordered no interference, so perhaps you could explain to me my dear, how it is a lowly handmaiden of Delphi has been having visions of possible futures involving a certain blonde warrior woman?"

"How should I know?" Artemis said, her voice as flat and hard as Zeus had ever heard it. Even as one of the more sensitive of his children, she could still show her steel when the moment required it. "Delphi is Apollo's city. It is no concern of mine. Perhaps you should try asking him."

"Daughter," Zeus sighed tiredly, "I love you dearly, but subterfuge was never your strong suit. If it were Apollo sending the visions then it would be his chosen Oracle receiving them."

"And even if it were true," Artemis answered, "and I was sending messages to this handmaiden you're talking about, what of it? I wouldn't be showing her anything that wasn't true."

"But perhaps only a version of that truth," Zeus replied with a groan, scrubbing his hand across his face in exhausted vexation. "You know that, despite what the Fates like to claim, the future is not always certain."

"They deserve a warning-" Artemis began to protest.

"But not one that will drive a wedge between them!" Zeus snapped, his voice suddenly fierce. "What you have shown the girl will only sew discord and strife between Callisto and those around her. You could not have botched this more if you'd tried, and the less said about your deplorable sense of timing the better!"

"I was just trying-" Artemis tried again to speak.

"Well stop!" Zeus barked. "Both of you! Your feeble attempts at aid have done nothing but the opposite! Were Callisto any less resilient, she would have been dead a dozen times over already, and I did not go to the trouble of returning her soul, kicking and screaming, to the world of the living, only to watch you both turn around and chuck her back on the funeral pyre before she's even taken two steps!"

For a moment, both Ares and Artemis stood silently, exchanging looks while Zeus fumed between them. Finally it was Ares who spoke first.

"Is that what this is about?" he said.

"What what is about?" Zeus sneered.

" _Her_ ," Ares hissed. "Callisto."

Zeus gave a derisive snort.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"He's not being ridiculous though is he?" Artemis cut in. "You may fashion yourself the imperious, hard hearted King of all Olympus father, but the truth is you have a sentimental streak a mile wide. Hercules alone is proof of that."

"You're saying that you think I've lost perspective?"

"I'm saying you seem a little preoccupied with Callisto's fate, yes."

"She is our champion-" Zeus began, but this time it was Ares' turn to cut in.

"She's one woman," he said. "The fate of the world is worth more than her salvation. Or even her life."

"Would you be saying the same if it was Xena's head I'd placed on the chopping block?" Zeus retorted.

Ares did not reply.

"I thought so," Zeus sneered derisively. "Callisto may be expendable, but that is not the same as disposable, and she is not finished yet. When _I_ deem that she is, I will be the one to toss her into Tartarus myself, and neither of you are to even think about doing so in the meantime, understood?"

Artemis and Ares glanced at one another, then nodded.

"Good!" Zeus barked. "And now that that's settled-"

"Excuse me," came a tremulous voice behind him.

Zeus frowned. There were few on Olympus who would dare to interrupt him when he was in one of his rages. The fact that someone down here of all places had worked up the courage to do so made him more curious than angry.

Brows still knotted together, he turned to see a young woman clad in a simple white chiton that hung down to the ground. Her hands were clasped together nervously in front of her, and her head was likewise bowed toward the ground. She had strawberry blonde hair, verging on red, and her build was slim but solid.

"Yes?" Zeus said. "What do you want?"

"My apologies for interrupting o' mighty Zeus," the young woman replied. "My name is Eve, and my Lord Hades bid me bring you all to him."

"He can't even be bothered to come and meet us himself?" Ares sneered. "Uncle's hospitality certainly has hit the skids recently."

Zeus shot Ares a warning glance.

"And we would be happy to accept his most gracious invitation," he said as politely as he could manage, turning back to face the nervous young woman. "Please, show us the way."

The girl gulped and nodded, setting off up the trail and motioning for them to follow her. The ground sloped upward beneath them, leading them away from the river and up onto the stone plateau that formed the base of vast cavern that formed Hades' Underwold. The cavern itself was so massive, Zeus was not even sure it had an ending. It stretched out in every direction, seemingly forever, and he supposed that on any given day it may do just that if that was what Hades wished of it. This was his brother's domain when all was said and done after all.

As they emerged onto the plateau proper however, it became increasingly apparent that Hades' control over his realm was no longer as absolute as it once might have been. The many fissures in the ground that glowed hotly with the fires of Tartarus had once been so distant from the Styx that you would have had to travel for many hours on foot to reach them. Now they were less than a mile from its banks, crisscrossing this way and that as they belched smoke and flame into the darkness.

Zeus stopped when he realised Artemis was no longer with them. Turning, he saw her standing several yards back down the trail they were following, her eyes wide as she stared out over the desolation before her.

"I didn't realise..." she began as Zeus approached her. "I didn't know..." She turned to look at him, and for the first time he saw true fear in her eyes as the reality of what was happening began to sink in. "How did it come to this? How did we let it get this far?"

"Naval gazing," Zeus said flatly. "Pure and simple. We were so wrapped up in our own petty squabbles, we forgot one of our greatest responsibilities. We may say that it was Callisto who started this when she killed Strife, but how did we ever allow her to even be in a position to do so? It was our own hubris led us to this point, and so here we find ourselves, ironically having to trust in out little scapegoat to be the one to fix it."

"And you really believe she's capable of that?"

"What other choice do we have?" Zeus said. "Our own carelessness and complacency has tied our hands. We cannot interfere for fear of undoing ourselves in the process."

Artemis sighed and started walking again, Zeus falling into step alongside her.

"Do you know the most frustrating part?" she said.

Zeus shook his head.

"It's that I'm supposed to be a God," Artemis said. "Creation itself is supposed to bow to my every whim. Yet here I stand, completely powerless in the face of something that, for the first time, seems so far beyond me."

A carriage was waiting for them a short distance ahead, a door in its side already standing open, as Eve stood beside it. Ares was already inside, waiting less than patiently and shooting them irritated glances as he did so.

Zeus gave Artemis a small smile.

"Humility is the proper response," he said. "Would that all my children were capable of it, but then, I suppose you all have too much of myself and my father in you. Still, you are not _completely_ powerless. That is why we are here after all. To lend Hades what help we may, and to buy more time for those we've charged with our defence."

"I just wish I could have the same faith in Callisto that you do," Artemis said as she reached the carriage and began to climb aboard.

"Better that you don't," Zeus replied, waiting as she boarded the carriage and then following her up. "A trust betrayed can be a very difficult thing to live with after all."

* * *

The journey to Hades' fortress was passed mostly in silence with the three of them gazing out of the windows of the carriage at the spreading fissures of Tartarus. They were like fingers in a flood, Zeus thought, grasping and clawing for purchase on something that would keep them afloat. The Styx was that purchase he realised, and the worlds of the living and the dead would tremble when they found it.

Before long, Hades' fortress loomed out of the darkness, It's massive walls and ramparts spreading up one of the cavern's walls like a series of great tiered steps used by giants. It was a monument to the character of its lord, grim, stark, and austere.

The carriage pulled up at its base, Eve – who had ridden up front beside another of Hades' honoured dead attendants – hopped down first, opening the door for them and showing them inside. The Fortress itself was almost as grim and gloomy inside as it was out, and Zeus found himself more than a little alarmed. Severe though he was, Hades took great pride in being a considerate and respectful host to those deserving of it, tending carefully to his home and making sure that it was always kept in the best of repair. His standards had let slide recently however. There was a chill in the air, and corridors normally well lit by smokeless torches now stood dark and foreboding, shadows haunting them in a manner that reminded Zeus of the those he had encountered across the Styx. These were mere shades, with none of the malevolence or intent of those others, but the association was still disconcerting to him.

Up and up they went, winding their way through innumerable corridors, junctions and antechambers, climbing winding stair cases and occasionally crossing ramparts until eventually they stood outside a pair of great stone doors. They were plain and undecorated, great slabs of grey granite that would have taken five men apiece to haul open. Now, one of them stood ajar, and it was here that Eve left them.

"My Lord awaits your pleasure," she said, gesturing to gap, wide enough for them to pass through in single file.

"You've done him credit," Zeus said, nodding to her as he stepped past and through the doors into the room beyond. Behind him followed Ares, paying the girl no mind at all while behind him, Artemis gave the girl a warm maternal smile. She was an unfortunate soul to have perished so young, and despite Hades' generosity in taking her into his home, Zeus still pitied her all that she had lost.

He had no more time to concern himself with her however. He was standing now in a great circular pit of solid obsidian. At the edges of the pit above, he could see a series of stone benches circling high and sheer into the darkness, an infinite number of them seemingly crammed into a finite space in such a way that for a mortal to look upon them would induce vertigo. This was Hades' audience chamber, where the spirits of the dead could stand before him and address whatever issues they wished. Zeus himself had been here many times, and though its layout was simple, the scale of the place never ceased to impress. He had to hand it to his brother; no one did it monolithic better.

Despite the size of the chamber in which they found themselves, it was the relatively small throne at the centre of the pit that now held their attention.

Or more specifically, the figure occupying it.

Hades was slumped upon the throne. He looked the worst Zeus thought he had ever seen him. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. His already pale skin looked clammy and stretched and his whole appearance was overall gaunt and malnourished. The sight of him in such a state was alarming even to Zeus.

Artemis had to stifle a gasp when she saw him, and was across the chamber in an instant, kneeling at his side and placing a comforting hand on his wrist, while pressing the other to his forehead. Zeus and Ares followed more cautiously, Ares in particular hanging back slightly as if he expected some terrible enemy to spring fully formed from his uncle's chest. Considering the reason for Hades' current state, the war god's wariness might not be entirely unwarranted.

"Uncle?" Artemis said gently. "Uncle, can you hear me?"

Hades' eyes fluttered weakly open as Artemis knelt beside him. For a moment he seemed confused, as if he were not sure where he was, then he caught sight of Zeus approaching, and his eyes slid sideways to find Artemis alongside him.

"Your concern is touching," he said with a long suffering groan, "but do please stop your ministrations. They will do little to no good at this stage."

Suddenly his breath seized in his chest and his brow furrowed as the chamber trembled beneath their feet. After a moment, the trembling passed and Hades' expression became slightly less pained.

"Sorry about that," he said as his eyes regained their focus. "My concentration slipped. It's been a while since I had visitors, and attempting to hold the Underworld together can be quite taxing."

"How bad has it gotten?" Ares said from behind Zeus.

"Bad," Hades replied, staring accusingly at Zeus and barely even furnishing Ares with a glance. "Cronus is growing stronger with every passing day. He pushes and I push back, but each time I am forced to give a little more ground; to retreat that little bit more."

"Maybe we still have time," Artemis interjected. "There are the others to call upon. We could go to them father; tell them what is happening. Cronus might be strong, but he is only one Titan. United we could surely overpower him before he can break through the barrier."

Zeus was about to answer, but Hades beat him to it.

"It's to late for that now," he said. "The barrier is so threadbare now I can barely hold it together as is. In it's weakened state, the power needed by us to hold back Cronus would rip the barrier asunder just as easily as he himself will given time. And that's without even beginning to think about his cult of Followers or that crazed Spartan army he has doing his bidding back in the world of the living. It won't be long now before the pressure on both sides is too much. The barrier being breached and him escaping is, I'm sorry to say, all but inevitable at this point."

Ares and Artemis exchanged worried glances and Zeus sighed.

"It's almost a relief to that at least your pessimism is as healthy and vibrant as ever," he said. Hades just shrugged in response.

"I'm merely being honest," he said. "There's little point in lying at this juncture."

A dark sneer crept across Ares' face.

"You're saying we should just give up then? Accept defeat?"

Zeus shook his head.

"Absolutely not," he said. "There's still hope, slim though it may be."

At that, Hades took Artemis' hand from his forehead and brushed aside the hand holding his wrist before straightening in his seat. Even such little effort seemed to consume almost all his strength, and for a moment Zeus almost thought he might actually collapse back into the seat again. His brother was more resilient than that however, and once the moment's weakness had passed, a little of that ice cold fire returned to his Hades' gaze.

"You're talking about that little blonde champion of yours aren't you?" he sneered sourly. "Don't think I don't know what's been going in on the world of the living brother. I'm not so preoccupied down here that I can't keep one eye on that viper you set loose. I see she's recovered now by the way."

Zeus nodded.

"Indeed she has," he said, "and surely that is an encouraging sign, no?"

Hades snorted in disgust.

"Hardly," he said. "She and those with her are drawing this Spartan army after them. Delphi will come under attack soon, and when it does..."

"We're all well aware of the consequences should that happen," Zeus jumped in before Hades could continue his usual doomsaying.

"Are you?" Hades hissed, arching an eyebrow at the King of the Gods. "Are you really? Because it appears to me that for all your talk, you're still sitting on your hands with your eyes and ears closed, hoping against hope that everything will all turn out well!"

He turned his attention to Artemis.

"Delphi is your brother's city isn't it?" he said, and Artemis nodded. "Then he's spoken to you about why it's such a special place?"

Artemis nodded again.

"The Naval of Gaia," she said. "Delphi is built right atop the focal point for all creation."

"And also the point where the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest," Hades added. "If your dear grandfather is to return, it will be there that he does so." He turned his attention back to Zeus.

"You know the stakes here," he said, more seriously now. "Cronus is growing too strong. I don't know how much longer I can hold him, but it would be safe to measure it in days rather than weeks at this point. We cannot place all our hope on Callisto. A battle at Delphi-"

Hades was suddenly cut short when another tremor rumbled through the fortress beneath them. Zeus watched with narrowed eyes as his brother's knuckles whitened on the arms of his seat, the thin line of his mouth drawing even thinner as he strained in invisible contest against some unseen force.

Taking a deep breath, Zeus reached out with his senses, touching gingerly at the very fabric of the reality that surrounded them. It felt ancient and primordial, of a manufacture both older than they and at the same time, utterly beyond them. Over the top he could feel Hades' own twists to the fabric, each one knitting it into the Underworld that lay outside the fortress.

Reaching beyond, he brushed gently against the barrier that lay at the very edges of existence. It was thin and threadbare here, stretched taught as Hades worked furiously to try and keep it from ripping open. Something was pushing at it from their side. It was invisible to him, and yet he knew it was there all the same, straining to pierce the barrier and escape to the other side; the realms of the living.

For a moment he did not engage, instead choosing to observe as it worked against Hades' efforts to contain it. Slowly it seemed to weaken, and Zeus felt Hades begin to withdraw, leaving the barrier untended for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, the force hurled itself forward, hammering into the barrier with such fury, Zeus was not sure it would withstand the assault. He was dimly aware of the fortress shaking around him, but paid it little mind as Hades' own consciousness threw itself back into the fray. Zeus wasted no more time, reaching out with his own strength, ready to match it against their enemy from the other side. He reached out and tried to cast the attacking power back with a disdainful wave of his hand.

It was like trying to flick a mountainside.

Gritting his teeth and pushing with all his might, he could barely hold the counter force in check, and back at his side he could feel Hades beginning to flag. The barrier bulged, threatening and obscene, and a voice sounded clear and loud inside his mind. It spoke with the rumbling presence of one who had strode the world when it was young and untamed, before mountains and oceans and when all had been fire and fury.

" _My son,"_ it announced, seething with bile and hatred. _"How very long it has been."_

"Father," Zeus answered, doing his best to hide the strain in his voice. "I would agree that it has been a long time, only I don't think its been near enough."

The unseen force, Cronus, laughed darkly at him from across the barrier.

" _How droll,"_ the ancient Titan said, its voice carrying no amusement whatsoever. _"At the very least your wits remain sharp. Age it would seem, has dulled everything else. You have become slow and fat my son, too secure and indolent in your supremacy. If the same is true of the rest of this vile spawn that dare to call themselves gods, I am ashamed to even think of them as my kin. I will take great pleasure in crushing each and every one of them come the day of my Return."_

"That day will never come," Zeus hissed at him. "We have defeated you before. We will do so again."

Cronus heaved against the barrier once more and Zeus could feel Hades struggling to contain him.

" _You think you can stop me?"_ Cronus sneered sarcastically. _"Your barrier weakens 'King of the Gods', and we both know what my freedom would mean for all the vaunted strength of the Olympians."_

"This is pointless father," Zeus said. "You were destroyed, utterly and completely. What remains of your corpse is petrified, now nothing more than stones on a hillside. Even if you break free, there is nowhere for you to go, no way to focus your spirit. You would come apart as surely as dust on the wind..."

Cronus' ugly laughter cut him short.

" _I still have my will, my son, and where there is a will there is also a way, so ready yourself; you and all your kind. You think yourself the undisputed lords of eternity? That crown was mine once, and soon it will be so again..."_ As he spoke, the Titan's voice began to fade, drifting back into the depths of the Underworld, and Zeus began to breathe a sigh of relief.

Suddenly Cronus surged back as he had before, battering against the barrier with all his might. Hades and Zeus together strained and struggled, but even with their combined might, they could not push him back.

" _YOUR POWER IS DONE!"_ Cronus's voice was a roar so loud it shook the earth. _"YOUR PRISON CANNOT HOLD ME, AND BARRIER CANNOT STOP ME! COME THE DAY OF MY RETURN, YOU WILL ALL DIE, AND AFTER THAT, THESE LONG CENTURIES OF SUFFERING I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO ENDURE WILL BE AS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE TORTURES I WILL PREPARE FOR YOU AND ALL YOUR WRETCHED SPAWN!"_

Zeus did not have the energy to reply. He and Hades both were at their limit as Cronus heaved at the barrier and he was dimly aware that his corporeal form had begun to sweat profusely. Then suddenly, it was no longer just he and Hades. Two more presences joined the contest of wills, one dark and filled with an insatiable hunger for the dark side of human nature. The other was still more primal, reveling in the thrill of the hunt and the pure, unmatched adrenaline of the chase. He recognised them both immediately. Ares and Artemis had joined the struggle.

As they lent their strength to the fight, Cronus' own grip began to relent, and slowly but surely he was driven back. Then, finally, as he began to retreat, Artemis' essence surged forward as if to try and land some kind of finishing strike. The dead Titan's counter stroke was terrible to behold. It struck Artemis dead centre, a focused torrent of pure malice that flung her back as if she were a ragdoll. In the corporeal realm, Zeus was dimly aware of Artemis' body being sent hurtling backward to crash heavily into one of the walls of the pit. For a moment he felt a rush of concern at the edges of his consciousness as she slumped limply to the ground, but he could not afford the lapse in concentration it would cause him to entertain it. Cronus was finally surrendering to them, his presence disappearing back into the realm of Tartarus from which it had risen.

" _Soon my son,"_ his voice sounded, now little more than a whisper once again. _"Very very soon."_

Zeus and Ares both sagged where they stood as there senses returned their focus to the material realm once more. Hades was slumped in his chair, his head lolling sideways in unconsciousness, his chest barely moving.

"Check on him," Zeus pointed. Ares did not so much as shoot him a poisonous look. Instead he simply nodded and turned to hurry to his uncle's side. They both knew that the time for arguments had passed.

Hades dealt with, Zeus turned and made his way quickly to Artemis' side. She was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, eyes closed and completely motionless. As he reached her, he hitched his robes and dropped to one knee, suddenly feeling the age that each millennium of life had awarded him. Reaching out, he placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder and rolled her onto her back, focusing what little of his strength he could spare to drag her back from the brink. For a while there was nothing, and Zeus felt a pang in his stomach. Then Artemis groaned and the pang dissipated in an instant to be replaced by a rushing tidal wave of relief. The goddess' eyes fluttered weakly open, taking a moment to focus on Zeus' relieved smile.

"We beat him then?" she croaked weakly, and Zeus nodded.

"He's been driven back..." he said, the relief he was feeling slowly being consumed by a mounting sense of foreboding. "...for now at least."

Artemis had to swallow before she could speak again.

"He was..." she began, as a pained expression began to pass across her face. "...Oh father... I didn't know... He was so much more than I had expected. It was like... like staring into the depths of creation itself."

Zeus nodded.

"My father was only one generation removed from that moment," he said. "And among all the Titans, his wrath was the most feared. He may not have been the strongest of them, but he had the most guile and cunning."

"Then how did you manage to defeat him?" Artemis asked, her strength returning fast enough that she could now push herself to be seated upright.

Zeus sighed and brushed off his knees, then straightened and offered her his hand.

"Not with the ease the stories make out," he said.

Artemis took his outstretched hand gratefully, heaving herself up to standing, only to have to balance herself against him when her knees trembled beneath her.

"It was a long, hard fought war that one, even with the likes of Prometheus on our side," Zeus continued as they made their way back across the chamber, Artemis' every step slow and pained. "In the end though, we were young and hungry, and they were old and tired, and so it was that Cronus was defeated, his material form shattered and petrified, and his spirit consigned to the deepest depths of Tartarus that Hades could conjure."

"And now it's the other way around isn't it?" Artemis said at his side. "Now we're the one's who're old and tired, and he's had centuries to plan his revenge."

"And hasn't he just done a bang up job of it too?" Ares sneered sarcastically at them as they approached, his usual temperament beginning to reassert itself now that their immediate crisis was dealt with.

Finally having the chance to look his son over, Zeus was surprised to see him looking so much the worse for wear. There were dark circles beneath the war god's eyes and his skin had taken on a slightly sallow tint while his hair hung limp and sweat soaked about his shoulders. Like his father, he had obviously attempted to pass some of his strength to Hades in an attempt to stir his uncle back to consciousness. Unlike Artemis though, Hades remained insensate.

"Is he alright?" Zeus asked, ignoring Ares' sarcasm.

"Does he look alright?" Ares replied, glancing down at the god of the Underworld. A small shudder ran through him. "Is this the fate that's waiting for the rest of us too?"

Hades' dried lips cracked open and he let out a parched groan, causing Zeus and Artemis both to hurry to his side as best they could manage.

"Hades?" Zeus asked leaning in close. "Hades my brother. Can you hear me?"

Hades' nod was barely perceptible. Ares let out a sigh of relief.

"So now what?" he said. "Are we really just going to sit here and hope Callisto of all people will be the one to save us?"

"Ares, my boy," Zeus said. "For a god, you show remarkably little faith. You've never trusted in me before, so I don't expect you to start now, but believe me when I say, Callisto will not fail. Of this I have absolutely no doubt.

Ares only rolled his eyes, while between them Hades opened his mouth and croaked something unintelligible.

"I'm sorry?" Zeus said, his brow knotted with concern as he leaned in closer. "Say that again. I couldn't catch it."

Hades groaned again and finally succeeded in cracking one eye open to regard Zeus balefully.

"I said..." he managed to murmur, "...that you and your blonde fetish will be the death of me."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm baaaaaack! This is it. The kick off to the big finale for the main Cronus stories that began with Part 2. Like all of these stories so far, I imagine that this one is going to take quite a bit of time, and run very long indeed, but I've come too far with these things to stop now. This one's just my now tradtional 'Zeus-and-his-conspirators-foreshadow-the-plot' prologue for now, but hopefully I'll be back before too long with more updates and chapters containing everyone's favourite psycho barbie. Anyway, hope you all enjoy it, and I look forward to seeing if I can really pull this all together and make a finale worthy of the attention of you guys.

Have fun and see you all again soon!


	2. Chapter One: His Wrath

**Chapter One: His Wrath**

Pelion did not know the name of the village burning some way down the trail from where he was standing, but he knew that he probably should. The deaths here should be remembered, their sacrifice as yet more fuel for the fire that would eventually burn down the barrier between worlds that prevented his Lord's return should be immortalised for the sake of posterity if nothing else. It was just that, since the Spartans had started north from Tryxis, there had been so many other villages just like this one that he was beginning to lose track.

Most of the small farming communities along the great northward road that connected Sparta and Delphi were virtually indistinguishable from one another, and Demosthenes' army had become so efficient at dealing with them that they had often passed them by before he even had chance to get a feel for the place. The army moved in two great columns when it was on the march, one acting as a vanguard force, the other a reinforcement division, while Pelion's own group of itinerant Followers trailed in the wake of both. When a village was sighted, the two columns of Spartans would swap roles, the vanguard delaying to deal with the village while the reinforcement division would leap frog it, in turn becoming the new vanguard.

Most of the villagers in these places were smart enough to know that when a Spartan force turned up on your doorstep, the most sensible thing to do was to quietly submit yourselves to them and let them be about their business. Demosthenes himself tended to travel with whichever column was acting as the vanguard for just this reason. He would quickly accept any surrenders offered to him and would occasionally leave behind a token force of between five or ten Spartans if the village seemed like one that might need a little 'reminder' every now and then of exactly who it was they had just sworn their loyalties to.

This particular village had not been one of the smarter ones. In fact it had proved to be the dumbest one so far when, for whatever reason, its inhabitants had chosen to resist.

Pelion normally rode with the Followers toward the rear of the Spartan formation, but on this occasion he had been riding beside Demosthenes at the head of the vanguard, both of them with their heads down and caught up in deep discussion. When the scouts had returned to the column and reported the village up ahead, Demosthenes had ordered his force to hang back before riding out with his small cadre of personal guards to magnanimously accept their unequivocal surrender. All the while, the reinforcement division began to adjust its march so that it would pass wide of the village's outskirts. As the Spartan King had approached the village on horse back, some overzealous village defender – probably the winner of the local archery contest at every summer fair and now only too eager to test his skill in a real battle – had put an arrow right through one of Demosthenes' guards eyes.

The Spartan had been dead before he had even hit the ground, and the village's fate had been sealed.

Demosthenes had pulled back to the safety of his lines to rally his forces and prepare to march on the village with his full strength. The effect would have been of a war hammer crushing a peanut. Before he had had chance to mobilise however, _she_ had attacked the village instead.

Since she had joined them shortly after Tryxis, she had gathered about her a small group of soldiers, maybe a hundred or so, culled from the less desirable elements of Demosthenes' army and from those among the Followers accompanying Pelion who had some kind of martial experience. As they had marched, the numbers accompanying her had grown. Occasionally she would disappear out into the surrounding country, only to return later with bands of uncouth bandits and less than savoury mercenaries in tow. Now her force numbered almost two hundred and they stood in sharp contrast to Demosthenes' proud army. Ragged, unkempt, and often clad in mismatched armour, they radiated a different kind of energy and danger to the more understated Spartans.

So far this small force had been marching in Demosthenes' shadow, a part of his army but separate from it, seemingly insignificant next to the huge Spartan columns. Now, as they roared through the village, burning, looting and pillaging as they went, Pelion almost felt a sense of pride in their accomplishment. Demosthenes and his troops may have been their Lord's Strength, but these people; they were his fury, ready and waiting to be unleashed like a mailed fist against those who stood in such open defiance of him. If he squinted, Pelion could just make her out in among them, her lithe frame dismounted from horse back and leading her troops through the firestorm the village had become with an almost suicidal lack of caution. Wherever they went, villagers died, houses burned, and the air hung thick with smoke and ash.

"This is what you would have us unleash on the world?" Demosthenes called to him, gesturing back down the trail as he made his way back to the Spartan line. "We are here to bring order to Greece. Not to watch that _thing_ of yours burn it to the ground!"

Pelion just glanced at him, then returned his gaze to the fires ahead of them.

"We are here to ensure His Return," he said evenly. "If we can do that, what will any of this matter? When our Lord is free this kind of suffering will become but a distant memory. You are a practical man are you not? And for a practical man, is such an end not worth any of the means taken to achieve it?"

Demosthenes' expression turned pensive and he shook his head slightly as he turned to stare at the village, all the while saying nothing. Pelion cocked an eyebrow at him.

"It troubles you doesn't it?" he said, and lifted his hands, lacing his fingers together and tapping thoughtfully at his lips. "Look at it another way then. Weren't you about to march your army in there to do the exact same thing she is doing now?"

Demosthenes shot him a poisonous glance.

"There is war," he snarled, "and then there's just butchery. This is not the former. It _is_ very much the latter."

With that he turned to one of the nearby captains on the line.

"Caracticus," he ordered. "Your men will march on the west flank. I will take the east. We'll cut off the survivors heading north then sweep south and meet up with the forces already engaged. Understood?"

Caracticus, a man of average build – or at the very least, average by Spartan standards – and a seemingly permanent sour expression shot Pelion a glance then turned to Demosthenes and dropped to one knee, his fist across his heart.

"It will be done Great King," he said, then turned and made his way off down the line to relay his orders to his troops.

"That plan sounds like an awful lot of work," Pelion said. "Why not just move on?" he nodded toward the village. "Sheappears to have things well in hand."

"Thanks to her, my options now are limited," he paused, looking across the village with a disgusted sneer on his face. "There's no saving this place now. All that's left is a mercy killing, quick and painless."

With that, he turned and made his way off down the line in the opposite direction to Caracticus, barking orders as he went. Soon the whole column was in motion and the air around Pelion was filled with that growingly familiar bass rumble of thousands of feet on the march.

Overhead the early afternoon sun had passed its zenith less than an hour before, and the shadows cast by the troops were beginning to lengthen as it began its descent toward the western horizon. As the final troops passed by him, Pelion noticed a couple of their shadows twitching and jumping erratically, and a slow smile spread across his face.

"Did you hear all of that?" he said aloud to the empty air. "Despite your many and varied assurances, I'm beginning to think your man doesn't have the stomach for this after all."

One of the nearby shadows twisted strangely, then coiled upward into the air, forming a pitch black seething mass that quivered momentarily, only to suddenly split evenly down the middle and go cascading back away after the soldier that had originally cast it. In its wake it left a single figure, tall, clad in dark robes with a hood that shadowed the wearers face and carrying a long hafted, silver bladed sickle.

"He is His Strength," the tall figure said, his voice hollow, as if someone had scraped every last trace of emotion from it. "Your doubts do not make that fact false."

"Oh come now Mortius," Pelion snorted gesturing toward the village. "Surely even you can see by now that my concerns were entirely justified."

Mortius cocked his head beneath his hood.

"How so?"

"A village of what? Maybe a hundred people," Pelion said, gesturing back toward the flaming buildings. The carnage was almost at an end now. Demosthenes' men would arrive too late to do much beside bury the dead. "Perhaps even less than that, and he was preparing to send in over a thousand men to finish it."

"A show of overwhelming force," Mortius replied simply.

"Or a coward's tactic to avoid even the remotest possibility of losing his precious troops," Pelion shot back. "There will be sacrifices demanded before this is through; of all of us. What will he sacrifice? One of his men? How about a hundred? Or a thousand? What about his entire army? Just how far do you think he's really willing to go in order to see this through to the end?"

Mortius stood silently for a moment, apparently lost in thought, and corners of Pelion's mouth turned upward in a victorious smile.

"You have no more faith in him than I it would seem," he said.

"And what of _you_ then?" Mortius countered archly, his tone causing Pelion to scowl.

"I have sacrificed more than you can imagine," he hissed defensively.

"Don't play your righteous card with me," Mortius said, a note of derision creeping into his otherwise emotionless monotone. "You have played it once too often. I know exactly what sacrifices you have made and they would be great indeed were you not the person you are."

"Believe whatever you will," Pelion said. "My faith will not be found wanting."

"Faith in our Lord, or faith in yourself?"

"I am His Faith," Pelion said with a shrug. "My faith in Him and my faith in myself are the same. One cannot exist without the other."

Mortius turned to look back in the direction of the village.

"And her then," he said.

Pelion's frown deepened.

"What about her?"

"What sacrifices will she have to make? Can you be sure she'll even make them?"

Pelion smiled again.

"Maybe we should go ask her and find out?" he said, starting toward the village. "She's not the type to shrink from a challenge."

Mortius said nothing. Instead he simply strode past Pelion down the trail toward the village.

Pelion watched him for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod to himself and set off after him. He took great delight in watching the other man bristle at his barbed comments about the woman. Mortius, more than anyone, despised her. She seemed able to get under his skin like no one else alive. Even Pelion himself had a harder time of trying unsettle the shadowy figure.

They walked in silence, down the trail in the wake of Demosthenes' troops. The two flanking forces had acted in perfect concert, and by the time Pelion and Mortius reached the edges of the village, the Spartans were already in among the buildings, causing her forces to draw back. Cavalier and deadly though they might be, they knew better than to challenge the solid wall of Spartan phalanxes descending upon them. Still, despite his lack of experience in battlefield strategy, Pelion was gratified to see that his earlier assessment of the battle – if the massacre that this one had clearly become could even be called such – had not been wrong. The first attack had already put most of the locals to the sword, and those that were left were now being rounded up on the small common at the village's centre.

Even with such a small village, Pelion was amazed at the sheer carnage her force had wrought in such a short space of time. There were bodies strewn about the streets, left bloodied and beaten where they had fallen, sightless eyes either staring off into the distance or closed forever more. Mortius seemed unfazed by the devastation, passing silently between the corpses and dragging skittering and leaping shadows in his wake like some grim spectre of death itself.

When they reached the village centre, they found Demosthenes and his men already there with the remaining villagers neatly arrayed in a single row and kneeling in the dirt before them, watching all that was taking place with fearful gazes. _She_ was there too, leaning nonchalantly against a dry stone wall with her sword propped up beside her, it's blade slick with blood. Demosthenes himself was standing beside her, red faced with fury and haranguing her for her unprovoked charge. For her part, she just looked bored by the whole affair.

"...without orders you broke formation and endangered every soldier holding your flanks!" Demosthenes was saying as Pelion and Mortius came within earshot. "It was reckless! Foolhardy! Completely irresponsible. Were you one of my men I'd-"

"But I'm not one of your men," she said, sounding completely uninterested as she brushed a lock of blonde hair back behind one of her ears and narrowed her eyes, not looking at Demosthenes but instead at the line of kneeling villagers. "It's probably for the best too. If I'd been forced to listen to your ceaseless prattle day in and day out for as long as this march has been, one of us almost certainly wouldn't have made it to this point alive." She turned to look at him for the first time, her eyes shining devilishly. "Feel free to use your imagination as to just which one of us that would actually be."

Demosthenes' gaze turned hard.

"Are you trying to threaten me?" he said.

She grinned in that shark-like way she had.

"Who said anything about trying?"

Demosthenes just stared at her for a few more moments, then glanced up and over her shoulder toward Pelion and Mortius. She noticed his change in focus and followed it, her eyes lighting up at the sight of them.

"Well, well," she said, her stare locking on to Pelion first "If it isn't my favourite religious zealot..." her eyes moved to Mortius and she clapped her hands together in mock delight. "...and you've brought along your comedy sidekick! How thoughtful of you! A little light entertainment always goes down well after a hard day's slaughter."

"You find me amusing?" Mortius said, his usually calm, collected voice almost a growl.

"Hilarious actually," she replied, her voice suddenly deadpan. "Can't you tell?"

Mortius took a threatening step forward.

"You're testing my patience-!" he all but snarled.

"Wouldn't have bothered if I'd known how little of it you-"

"ENOUGH!" Mortius suddenly barked with such fierceness that even Pelion and Demosthenes took a nervous step back from him. Pelion had seen Mortius wield that sickle he carried before and he did not envy anyone who found themselves on the receiving end of it.

The blonde woman did not so much as flinch under Mortius' fury however. Instead, she stooped and swept up her still bloodied sword.

"Sensitive isn't he," she said as an aside to Pelion that caused Mortius to stiffen angrily. It was all the old priest could do to hold back a smirk.

"He has been quick to anger of late, it's true," he nodded.

"You will explain yourself at once," Mortius snapped sharply, cutting into their back and forth.

The grin on the woman's face disappeared.

"Explain myself?" she said, her expression darkening as she spoke. "Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. I don't think I'll be doing that."

Mortius straightened to his full height so that he towered over her imperiously.

"I was not offering you a choice," he said, his voice low once more. "You will tell me why you disobeyed orders. Why you broke ranks without permission, and assaulted this village out of turn."

"How about because I'm not some witless lackey who's spine turns to water at the merest sight of you?" the blonde woman retorted. "No one commands me Mortius, understand? No one. Not you; not your puppet king over there, and not even Cronus who you all esteem so highly. I'm not some dog of war to be unleashed. When I fight it's for _my_ reasons, and my reasons alone."

"And this time then?" Demosthenes said from behind her and she glanced back at him over her shoulder. "If that's true, and since you haven't involved yourself before, why fight now?"

"The march is almost over," she said. "Delphi's not that much further, and if they don't already know we're coming, they will do before we reach them. Ithius and his allies will see to that."

Demosthenes' eyes narrowed at the mention of the escaped Helot leader but he remained silent.

"It's time to stop pretending you're some honourable saviours out to save the world," she continued. "You're not messiahs, not champions of the disenfranchised and downtrodden. You're conquerors, plain and simple. It's time you all started acting like it. Sow a little fear and chaos. Leave a trail of scorched earth in your wake and make it known what happens to any who resist; that they will be purged with fire and sword to make way for this new world you're all going to build."

Even Pelion frowned at that last part.

" _Our_ new world?" Mortius said, noting the same choice of words Pelion had. "Not yours?" He glanced over at the old priest. "It looks like we have our answer then."

"What?" the woman said arching an eyebrow at the pair of them, "You thought I was like them?" she gestured up the trail and out of the village toward the robed Followers who were just now coming into view. "Just another of Cronus' brainwashed masses?"

"They are His loyal Followers," Pelion said softly. "There is nothing they would not do for him."

"Would they die for him?" the woman asked.

"The truest of them," Pelion nodded. "If need be, yes, without hesitation."

"Would any of you?"

"Absolutely," Pelion replied, but both Mortius and Demosthenes remained worryingly silent. The blonde woman grinned.

"What's the matter?" she gloated. "Cracks starting to show?"

"If you aren't in His service then what is to stop me from gutting you here and now?" Mortius spoke, trying to change the subject.

She turned to look at him, her grin widening.

"My dear Mortius," she smiled. "You're most welcome to try, but you might find me harder to handle than you were expecting."

"I've dealt with you before," Mortius answered matter-of-factly, causing the woman to laugh.

"In a manner of speaking, yes, I suppose you have. She is me after all."

"Callisto is so much more than you," Mortius said, his voice completely flat once more but somehow still able to twist like a knife. "You're not even a person. You're just a shade; a walking, talking reflection of bitterness and hate."

As he spoke, the woman's expression changed, her smile disappearing to be replaced by a look of absolute, all consuming fury.

"If that's all I am, it's because that's all _she_ is!" she spat viciously. "We areone and the same, Callisto and I, and I intend to prove it. Your Lord Cronus has promised to help me do precisely that." She shot Demosthenes a venomous glare. "You asked me why you have me at your side? A business arrangement. Nothing more. So long as your Lord honours his side of the bargain, and while it serves my interests to hold up mine, you have my sword. Does that answer your question well enough?"

"Well enough and more," Demosthenes said dryly, glancing at Pelion as he did so.

At that moment, two soldiers appeared at Demosthenes' back. One was Captain Caracticus, straight backed and all rigid military formality. The other was a curious one. His body language was a study in submissiveness, his hands hanging at his sides and his head bowed slightly so that he was not looking any of them in the eye. There was something about him though, an air that spoke to Pelion of hardness and defiance. This man was not half so cowed as he wanted to appear to be, and Pelion could not help but notice the absence of his Lord's symbol, the bloodied sickle, about the other man's person. He was one of Demosthenes' Spartans then, but not like Caracticus. Not a loyal Follower.

Had Pelion had his way, such men would have all been ordered back to Sparta days ago. After Sentos' betrayal and escape at the Helot camp, and then the subsequent difficulties he had posed Demosthenes at Tryxis and beyond, there were rumblings among those that did not ascribe to the teachings of the Followers that perhaps this war of conquest they were embarking upon was a fool's errand; a distraction from the true Persian threat that still loomed large beyond the borders of Greece. Demosthenes argued that it was strategy to keep them with the army. He was fond of quoting the old axiom about keeping enemies closer than friends, and said that to send them back to Sparta may even result in a rebellion taking the city from him. Pelion did not see that that even mattered. Their future did not lie behind them, but before them. Sparta itself was the past. Its part in this battle was done, and in Cronus' new world its petty hierarchies would be irrelevant. Far greater glories awaited them, but Demosthenes did not seem to be able to see that.

"Great King..." Caracticus said, and his voice jarred Pelion back to the here and now.

"Yes Captain?" Demosthenes said without looking at the man. His eyes were still fixed on the blonde woman.

"You gave orders to be informed when we had finished rounding up the survivors."

"You have them all?"

Caracticus nodded.

"As best as we are able to tell, yes."

"Very well then," Demosthenes said, and nodded his head toward the woman. "Up until now you've been content to sit back and let me and mine do the hard work. That ends now. You started this. Now all that remains is to see if you can finish it."

"To see if I can get my hands dirty you mean?" the woman said, and cocked her head. "What makes you think they were ever clean?"

She glanced past him at the two soldiers.

"Kill them," she said. "All of them. Right now."

Caracticus only flinched slightly, but the other man looked openly taken aback.

"But Geat King-" he began only for the woman to cut him off.

"Don't ask him!" she snapped, stalking up to the Spartan soldier, her sword twitching between her fingers as she glared at him. "He's not in charge here. He all but said as much. I want them dead, and you and your captain here are going to do it for me. If you won't bring me their heads, then I'll start with yours and collect the rest myself!"

Demosthenes was smiling now, seeming to take some small measure of pleasure in the soldier's obvious discomfort.

"Do as she says Orestes," he said.

"But they've surrendered!" Orestes protested. "They're unarmed—"

"AM I NOT YOUR KING!?" Demosthenes bellowed, rounding on him and causing the other man to collapse to one knee in the dirt. "Remind me again, Orestes, what is the penalty for disobedience?"

"A hundred lashes Great King," the soldier said immediately. "And if such disobedience is allowed to continue?"

"Execution, Great King."

Demosthenes nodded and laid a hand on the Orestes' shoulder.

"Fool me once, Orestes," he said, his tone now a quiet warning. He turned to Caracticus "I take it you will see this carried out?"

Caracticus straightened and nodded.

"It will be done, Great King."

Demosthenes was already turning away, the momentary drama all but forgotten.

"See that it is," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Caracticus bent to take Orestes by the arm and haul the younger man to his feet. A hang dog look of utter defeat had settled across Orestes' features as he turned away from them and began to shuffle dejectedly away.

"Orestes," the woman called out, her tone taunting and conversational at the same time. "I've changed my mind."

"You don't want them killed?" the soldier said, his face almost pathetically hopeful as he turned to look at her.

"Oh no," she laughed. "I still want their heads on sticks, but I have a special mission for you." She pointed at the bedraggled line up of survivors, picking out a particularly decrepit looking old woman. "That old woman. You're to bring her to me."

"Why do you want her?" Demosthenes asked, frowning.

"That's my business," she said. "And certainly none of yours. Needless to say I have my own plans, and I've just decided she will play a part in them. That's all you need to know."

"And the rest?" Orestes asked bitterly. "How do you want them dealt with?"

The woman paused thoughtfully for a moment, then gave a shrug as if their deaths were not really that important. "Tell your Captain he should feel free to indulge himself."

Orestes said nothing, merely glowering at her before turning and walking away.

"Quite the monster you've conjured up, Pelion," Demosthenes said and the woman turned and winked at him.

"Your priest didn't make me," she said, "Callisto did. Remember that the next time you come up against her. Maybe then you won't underestimate what she's capable of."

With that she too turned and strode off after Orestes, her head held high and her every step oozing self confidence.

Pelion stood quietly, watching her departing figure.

"What do you think?" Demosthenes said, walking up to stand beside Mortius.

"She can't be trusted," Mortius replied.

"She's perfect!" Pelion breathed, not really listening to them, and more for his own benefit than theirs.

"Perfect!?" Demosthenes said, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. "She's insane!"

Pelion shook his head.

"Not insane," he said. "Don't you see? She's focused, with a goal so singular that nothing, not you or I, and certainly not Callisto or any of that motley band she surrounds herself with will be allowed to stand in her way until she gets what she wants."

"But what does she want?" Mortius replied.

"The same thing we do," Pelion said. "For it all to end. Why else would she be here?"

Demosthenes gave a disgusted snort.

"Believe what you will about her," he sneered. "She's a rabid dog and that's it. We'd all be safer if she was just put down here and now."

Like Orestes and Caracticus before him, he turned and strode off leaving only Mortius and Pelion standing behind him.

"He's a fool," Pelion said, turning to face Mortius. "He has no imagination; no vision for what come after this little war of his."

"And you think she does?" Mortius replied, his tone only slightly incredulous.

"She doesn't have to!" Pelion said. "Isn't that the beauty of hatred? Of righteous anger? It doesn't need to worry about what comes after. Leave that up to the heart to imagine, the head to plan, and the arm to carry out."

"You're saying we should just let her loose and watch the world burn?"

Pelion sighed.

"I'm saying we let her be the cleansing fire she was always meant to be. Let her be His champion the way Callisto is theirs. She can be His anger and His hatred unleashed against the lies and hypocrisy the Olympians have wrought. You are His Soul, I am His Strength, and Demosthenes – may the Titans save us – is His Strength. Why not add a fourth to our little number? Why not let her be His Wrath?"

Mortius stood silently for a moment.

"We _do_ need something to call her..." he grudgingly admitted.

Pelion smiled.

"As I understand it, 'Callisto' is already taken."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A smaller update with the now traditional chapter one villain viewpoint chapter. This was actually a lot of fun to write as up until now I've only written 'mean' Callisto (the doppleganger) interacting with Callisto herself. Actually getting to write her interacting with the other villains was great and a welcome change of pace to all the angst of her interactions in part 3. Anyway, read on and I hope you all enjoy it.


	3. Chapter Two: Open Waters

**Chapter Two: Open Waters**

The cold ocean breeze carried the scent of salt and brine as it rustled the sails over Adrasteia's head. Glancing up at them, she shivered and folded her arms tightly across her chest, hugging herself in an attempt to keep in the warmth as she returned her gaze to the churning wake the ship was leaving behind it. Autumn was rapidly coming to an end, and the first chills of winter were beginning to arrive, with them only growing worse as the ship sailed further and further northward. True winter was still some weeks away yet, but here, out to sea as she was and with very little shelter, the wind's bite was all the more keen.

A particularly nasty gust of wind cut straight through her, and she clenched her teeth tightly to keep them from chattering.

She should probably have stayed below decks out of the cold, but the dreams had come again in the night and she needed the fresh air. They came almost every night now – visions more than dreams really – and they were always the same. An indistinct army without banners or crests, marching between burning cities and sky riven with fire. At its head were three disparate figures; an old priest, a man with the look of a soldier, a figure seemingly wrought from living shadow. Out in front of them was a fourth figure even more unusual than the rest, a young warrior woman carrying a bloodied sickle.

When the visions had started, those four had been mysteries to Adrasteia, strange individuals with little rhyme or reason to their appearance. After the events in Sparta and Tryxis however, things were a little clearer and she now knew almost all of them. The old man was Pelion, once a priest of Asclepius, but now the religious figure head of some strange new cult calling themselves The Followers, and were rapidly spreading throughout most of the inhabited cities of Greece. He was also a murderer, having killed his own daughter and her brother's wife for reasons she did not fully understand.

The man with the air of a soldier about him was Demosthenes, once one of the two Kings of Sparta who had helped to rule the city alongside his fellow Leonidas and the elected Council of Ephors. Leonidas and the Ephors were all dead now, mainly due to Demosthenes' scheming that had left him as the city's sole military dictator. He was also a member of the Followers alongside Pelion, though his level of authority within the cult itself was not entirely clear. He was somewhere south of them now, marching northward with the full force of Sparta's army at his back in an attempt to take control of the northern Greek city states.

The shadowy figure she did not know, but she had her suspicions about him based on what her brother had been through recently during his own time in Sparta. The final figure, the blonde woman... she was harder to judge too, but for different reasons than the man of shadows.

The sound of clashing steel interrupted her thoughts and she turned to look down at the ship's main deck. The crew were going about their business, tending the rigging and calling out instructions to one another while from below decks she could hear the muffled chanting of the ship's oarsmen. Only a few individuals did not seem engaged in the running of the ship. One of those was her brother, sitting off to the ship's starboard side and tending the blade of his sword with a whetstone he had managed to scrounge up from somewhere.

It was not her brother that caught her attention however, but rather the other two who were the source of the sounds that had caught her attention in the first place; one man and one woman. The woman was rangy and blonde; the exact image of the woman from Adrasteia's dreams and that face alone was enough to make the hairs on the back of Adrasteia's neck stand up. The two of them were locked together in combat now, their swords ringing off each other as they moved back and forth in an intricate dance that was almost too fast for Adrasteia to take in. As best as she could tell, they were evenly matched as adversaries until suddenly something the man did that she was not skilled enough to notice changed the cadence of the fight, forcing the woman into retreat. She did not seem to like that, and redoubled her efforts to fight back, pressing the man's defences hard. It was all in vain though, and moments later her sword had been sent spinning away from her grip.

"Hey!" a nearby crewman yelled as the flying weapon clattered to the deck a few feet short of him. "Watch what you're doing why don'chya?"

The two combatants had parted as soon as the sword was lost and the woman, now breathing hard, shot the crewman a poisonous look.

"You have a problem?" she snapped irritably at him. "Then come over here and say it!"

The man eyed her warily for a moment, then he swallowed and stooped, picking up the sword before making his way over to her. Adrasteia could not help but notice the way he stopped just out of easy reach of her, holding out the sword at almost full arms length as if he were trying to feed a cobra barehanded. A small crowd was beginning to gather now, watching the scene unfold with stifled amusement as the crewman sweated nervously.

"There's no problem at all ma'am," he trembled, the irritation he had shown earlier seeming to have drained away in an instant. "Just surprised is all."

The woman gave a dismissive snort and snatched the blade back from him. The moment the sword left his grip the crewman backed away quickly, much to the chortled amusement of the small crowd of onlookers.

"Shouldn't you all be tying knots in things?" the blonde woman sneered at them.

Her audience vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, all of them bowing their heads and hurrying on about their business as if trying to pretend they had never been watching in the first place.

"Callisto," the woman's sparring partner called. He was a tall man with close cropped sandy hair. Ithius was his name. "Are you ready to go again, or would you rather keep terrorising Drevus' crew?"

The woman called Callisto rolled her eyes and turned back to face him.

"You know me," she began. "Ready when you-"

Ithius did not give her time to finish, his sword instead whipping around at her so fast it was little more than a blur of silver. Callisto barely got her blade up in time to defend herself, and in an instant the two of them were back to their dance again.

They had been sparring like this regularly since leaving Tryxis, two or three times a day for an hour or sometimes more each time. Adrasteia had no idea how they kept it up for so long. They moved so quickly and with such ferocious energy that even watching them was exhausting. Indeed, there were times where even Ithius seemed to be struggling. He would normally be the one to end the sessions and when he did, he would always be coated with sweat, his hair – close cropped though it was – still managing to be slicked down to his scalp while his arms quivered from the effort of holding his sword. Yet, despite his obvious weariness, Adrasteia had not seen him loose to Callisto. Not once in all their sessions had she managed to overcome him, though certainly not for want of effort.

"Up here again?" came a familiar voice from her left, and Adrasteia glanced over to see Themistocles approaching.

"I thought you were sleeping in this morning," she said.

"I would've been," Themistocles replied, "Except that we're due to make landfall later today, and Captain Drevus is determined to wring whatever final few dinars he can from me for his services while we're all still aboard."

"How much has he got you up to by now?"

Themistocles waved his hand dismissively.

"It hardly matters," he said and moved forward to rest his elbows against the guardrail that overlooked the lower deck. "I have enough to buy this boat of his three times over and still continue on with my life quite comfortably."

"My father always used to say you should treat your money with respect," Adrasteia replied, walking over to lean on the guardrail beside him. "If it's easy to throw away, it's easy to lose as well."

"A sensible man, your father," Themistocles said. "Perhaps I'll get to meet him one day."

"Would that you still could," Adrasteia said sadly, looking down at Athelis where he was seated on the deck. The resemblance between he and their father was uncanny.

Next to her Themistocles remained respectfully silent for a time.

"You look cold," he said eventually. "Perhaps you should go below. It's hardly the most comfortable of accommodations down there, but it's certainly warmer."

"I'm fine," she answered tartly, irritated by his condescension. "I don't need to go below,"

"But you need to be up here?"

"Yes," she snapped before she could really think about what she was saying.

"Why?"

Adrasteia gave a long suffering groan. Themistocles was one of the most infuriating men she had ever met. An Athenian, an Archon, a general, and a talented warrior all wrapped up in the same package, he was also a study in inscrutability. One moment he could callous and hard, the next surprisingly warm and compassionate. Indeed, the only stable element to his personality was his remorseless practicality.

"You know why," she said, turning her attention back to the sparring session as she did so. "It's only the same reason as yesterday, and the day before that too."

"Ah yes," Themistocles nodded, following her eye line. "The Callisto question. Still trying to figure her out are you?"

Adrasteia knew the question did not really need an answer, but she nodded all the same.

"It's just so confusing," she said, frowning. "Every time I sleep, I see her in my visions. I've known her face since before I ever even met her – before I ever even knew it was Callisto I was seeing – and then when you suggested it _was_ her I just assumed... I mean... I've heard the stories about her. Who hasn't at this point? I thought she'd be..." she gave a frustrated grunt. "...I don't know. I thought she'd be..."

"...a monster?" Themistocles offered helpfully.

Adrasteia just groaned.

"You know, I almost wish she was," she said. "That'd make it all so much simpler. But she's not is she? Not really. She's just a person. Crazy? Sure. Dangerous? Definitely, but a monster?" She looked at Themistocles. "What about you?"

Themistocles cocked an eyebrow at her.

"What about me?"

"You're better at this than I am," Adrasteia said. "Better at figuring people out I mean. You seem to know them inside and out as soon as you meet them. So..." she took a deep breath. "I'm asking what do you make of her?"

Themistocles opened his mouth to speak, then paused, his expression hardening as he watched Callisto carefully. She and Ithius' swords were locked, each one's steel scraping loudly against its counterpart. Callisto suddenly attempted to stamp on Ithius' foot, but the other man seemed to anticipate the move, whipping sideways and throwing Callisto off balance so that he could bring his sword around in what would have been a killing stroke had their sparring been a real fight. Instead he merely brought the flat of his sword to rest across her spine.

"Again?" he asked flatly. Callisto nodded, batting his sword aside in barely contained anger and stepping back from him to reset for the next bout.

"Again," she growled from beneath clenched teeth. "And don't go easy on me this time!"

Next to Adrasteia, Themistocles spoke. She had almost forgotten she had asked him a question in the first place.

"You want my honest opinion?" he asked.

"I do," Adrasteia replied.

Themistocles sucked thoughtfully at his teeth with his tongue.

"I can't really get a read on her either," he admitted finally. "That's often the way with the infamous though isn't it? The myth rarely survives the reality. Were you to believe the stories you'd end up believing she was some kind of harridan sent straight from Tartarus. A self styled Warrior Queen, out to prove herself as the one true heir to Xena's vacant throne by drowning half of Greece in blood, but how much of that is actually true..." He gave a small shrug before continuing. "You're right when you say she's dangerous. Perhaps even more than you realise, although maybe not for the reasons you think. You're not right when you say she's crazy though. There's far too much method in her madness for that, although it might not look that way at first. As to what exactly that method is, what drives her to be the person she is and do the things she's done..." He gave Adrasteia a sideways glance. "...It beats me."

His eyes flicked in the opposite direction and he gave a tired sigh. Adrasteia followed his gaze to see Drevus approaching them.

"It looks like our good Captain isn't quite done discussing payment with you yet," she said.

"You're more than welcome to negotiate in my place," Themistocles replied.

"Oh no," she chuckled back at him. "This one's all yours."

"How very charitable of you," Themistocles grunted then turned and moved off to intercept Drevus. Before he could leave, Adrasteia called out to him.

"Themistocles?"

He turned, frowning at her.

"Yes?"

"Why me?" she said. "Why am I the one with these visions in my head?"

Themistocles gave her a tired smile that was supposed to be reassuring but that did not quite manage to reach his eyes.

"Don't think about it too much," he said. "Whichever god it was decided to gift them to you, they did it for a reason. I'm sure we'll get our answers, and if my guess is correct, we'll get them sooner rather than later."

With that he turned away again and strode off across the deck. Adrasteia watched him go, then leaned forward over the railing and returned her attention once more to Callisto and Ithius' sparring.

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," she muttered.

* * *

Steel scraped harshly across steel as Callisto's blade collided with Ithius'. The larger man twisted his wrist with the impact, absorbing the impact rather than pushing back against it in an attempt to let Callisto's own follow through carry her past him as he sidestepped with the twist. She did not fall for the ploy, instead twisting on her heel and spinning to keep him in sight, using her own momentum to carry her sword around in a vicious sideways hack. Ithius intercepted it easily and danced backward out of reach, infuriating Callisto and driving her to press her assault. First she struck high, then high again, and again for a third time. As Ithius moved to guard against a fourth high strike, she went low, attempting to cut his knees out from under him. Somehow he managed to dodge, rocking back off his right leg and spinning on his left to carry him sideways. Again Callisto moved with him, readying her guard to protect her right hand side.

Then Ithius came at her from the left.

Jamming his foot down, he span back the other way, his sword arcing in a furious silver blur, only to suddenly arrest its sweep an inch or so from her exposed midriff.

"Dead again," he said, straightening, and Callisto rolled her eyes at him.

"Story of my life," she said, stepping back and brushing strands of hair out of her face. The chill wind at her back blew them right back into her face again, and she gave up with an irritated snarl. "Then again, I suppose I've had worse."

Ithius cocked an eyebrow at her.

"When exactly?"

"Did you forget who you're talking to? Suffocated, burned, _and_ impaled remember. Take your pick as to which of them you think is the least painful, but none of them are particularly nice ways to go."

"Well maybe if you wore a bit of actual armour-" Athelis chimed in from where he was sitting nearby, only to stop short when she rounded on him

"And what's that supposed to mean?" she said, her voice a shade too even.

"Just that you _are_ kind of..." Athelis bit his lip. "well... a bit... you know."

Callisto cocked an eyebrow at him and planted her hands on her hips, her fingers drumming steadily.

"No," she said. "I really don't. Perhaps you'd care to elaborate?"

Athelis shot Ithius an imploring look, but the other man just gave a half smile and shook his head.

"Um... well... a bit... kind of..." he cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Exposed."

Callisto's eyebrow continued its ascent toward her hairline.

"Exposed," she echoed nastily.

Athelis coughed again, and nodded toward her bare midriff.

"Yeah... y'know. Exposed."

Callisto clenched her teeth.

"I like the maneuverability," she hissed. "Have you ever tried turning back flips in a breast plate?"

Athelis shook his head.

"Didn't think so," she snapped. "We'll have this conversation again when you have. Until then, you keep your suggestions to yourself."

She turned back to Ithius.

"And you, wipe that smirk off your face," she snarled and hefted her sword to a ready position. "We're going again."

Ithius smoothed out his face and studied her for a moment before shaking his head.

"No," he said simply. "We're not." Turning, he made his way off over toward the ship's central mast where he had left his blade's scabbard propped against it.

"Oh no," Callisto said starting after him. "Not this again. You told me you'd train me Ithius. I came to you, and you promised me you would!"

"I did," Ithius said, without turning around. "And I am."

"How is walking away training me for anything other than how to stab you in the back?"

"It just is." Ithius lifted his sword's sheath. "You have to trust me on this."

"Like Leonidas did?"

The jibe was a mistake. She realised that almost as soon as she said it. She was not even sure where it had come from, but did it really matter? What was said, was said and there was no way to change it now.

In front of her, Ithius rammed his sword into its sheath so that the steel hissed sharply off the leather, and then turned to give her a hard look. Callisto just lifted her chin and returned his glare. She had never been one to be intimidated by anyone or anything, and she was not about to break that habit now.

"Why do you want this so badly?" he said, his voice low and careful.

"You know why."

"I do," Ithius nodded. "But I want you to tell me again."

"Mortius." Her teeth ground against one another. "I can't beat him. I need to be able to."

"Again, why?"

"Because of everything he's done!" she snapped sharply.

"Not buying it," Ithius said with a shake of his head. "You'll have to try harder. If you want to convince me."

Callisto gave a frustrated snarl.

"Convince you!?" she snapped, waving her arm around the ship in an exasperated way. "This is all his doing, Ithius! We're only here now because of him. The deaths of your people, the burning of Tryxis, the betrayal of Leonidas; all masterminded by him and his god. Isn't that enough?"

"For me, maybe," Ithius said. "For my people, or for Sentos and his, maybe. For you though..." he shook his head at her. "Still not convinced it's enough."

Callisto's eyes narrowed.

"He put me in a coma," she hissed. "He threatened my family-"

"Your family's dead."

Callisto shot him a venomous look. He just shrugged in return.

"I'm sorry, but it's the truth," he said. "How can anyone threaten the dead?"

Her jaw tightened.

"Even the dead can still suffer," she said.

Ithius regarded her silently for a moment, then took a deep breath.

"Look," he began. "I can teach what you think you want to know; techniques, sword forms, footwork, all of that stuff, and you'll drink it up because that's what you do. It's what you're good at. What took me years of practice to learn you pick up in days. You're already better at this than me, and you were before we ever even met."

"If that's true," Callisto snapped in irritation. "If I'm so damned talented, then why can't I beat you, huh? Why can't I beat _him?"_

"Because you still haven't learned the one lesson you need to yet," Ithius replied. "The fight is everything, Callisto. It demands your focus, your deepest commitment. But you can't give it, because you're not in the fight. Not really. You're too busy in a different one."

Before Callisto could answer, a cry went up from over head. One of Drevus' sailors had scaled the mast to adjust the rigging and was now pointing northward.

"LAND HOY!" he yelled.

"Hold that thought," Callisto said, raising her sword and sheathing it across her back so that the hilt and pommel jutted up over her right shoulder.

Already those crew members not engaged about the deck were moving to the ship's prow to get their first sight of land in the last three days. Callisto and Ithius joined them, Athelis trailing behind them both. His sister was already there, and Themistocles stood a little past her. Callisto could feel his eyes on her as she stepped up to the prow, the sailors clustered before her parting warily as she moved between them. She ignored all their stares, her attention on the distant shoreline just now cresting the horizon.

To the east and west, sheer stone cliffs rose up like battlements against the battering force of the ocean. Even at this distance she could see the ocean churning white at their base as it dashed itself against them. To the east, those cliffs curved south, arcing around in a great bay wall that disappeared into the ocean haze. It was somewhere over that horizon that Demosthenes' Spartan army was marching north in parallel to Drevus' ship, and Callisto felt her pulse quicken at the thought of facing them again.

Off to the west, the cliffs curved the opposite way, heading north and forming the northwestern most corner of the huge bay across which they had been sailing since Tryxis. Between the two sets of cliffs lay a landscape of quiet inlets and wide black-sand beaches that eventually sloped upward into high rolling hills and deep stream cut valleys a league or so inland. It was a sight Callisto knew all too well, and yet that she was still not entirely prepared for. Somewhere high in those hills lay the city of Delphi and its surrounding territories. Years ago, when she had first challenged Xena, she had laid siege to these lands, and if what Athelis and Adrasteia told her was true, they had never forgotten or forgiven her for the crimes she had committed, not that she had ever really expected them to.

It was not the thought of returning to Delphi and the potential 'justice' that awaited her there that made her heart skip a beat however. It was the sight of those familiar black-sand beaches and the memories they conjured.

"Are you alright?" she heard Themistocles ask. She had not noticed him stepping up beside her.

"Ah, the great Themistocles," she replied, putting on an affected tone of mock haughtiness as if she were some king's courtier. "Finally deigning to climb down from your ivory tower and speak to me? If you don't mind me asking, to what do I owe this most unwanted concern?"

Themistocles cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Who said I was concerned?"

Callisto gave him a dark, toothy smile.

"I'm fine. Peachy in fact. Thanks for asking."

"Really?" Themistocles said, a note of feigned surprise entering his voice, "because you look a little..." he paused, glancing down pointedly at the railing in front of them.

For the first time, Callisto realised that her fingers had locked themselves around the wooden railing in a white knuckle death grip. Reflexively, she released her grip on it and balled her hands into fists before letting them hang at her sides.

"...tense," Themistocles finished with a satisfied smile.

"Can't imagine why you might think that," she said tightly.

"Maybe I can," Themistocles replied, leaning forward over the railing as he did so. Callisto had to fight the urge to seize him by the ankles and pitch him over the side into the water. "But I need you to clarify a few things for me."

Callisto stood for a moment, glaring at him.

"Clarify what exactly?"

Themistocles gave her strange half smile.

"I'm an Athenian," he said. "I wasn't in Delphi when you did the things you did."

"Murdered and pillaged you mean?" Callisto offered helpfully. "Don't mince your words, Themistocles. You don't strike me as the type."

Themistocles regarded her for a moment, then nodded.

"Very well," he said. "Like I was saying, I wasn't here when you were busy butchering men, women and children, but I _did_ hear the stories. I don't think there was a town in Greece that didn't. You had an army of murderers and thieves on your side, and had cut a swathe of destruction across the northern states. You had brought Delphi to its knees, and had everywhere else quaking in fear at what you might do next. Then along comes Xena and stops you. Twice as a matter-of-fact."

"All hail the glorious Xena," Callisto said archly.

"Quite so," Themistocles nodded sagely. "A hero for the ages, that one." Callisto shot him a poisonous look, but he carried on as if oblivious. "But it's what comes next that really interests me. You just kind of... disappear. There were more stories that tried to explain what happened to you of course, and each one was more incredible than the last."

"What can I say," Callisto smiled wickedly. "I'm an incredible kind of girl."

Themistocles nodded grimly.

"Indeed you are," he said. "If you weren't I'd question how you are standing here in front of me at all. After all, some of those stories I mentioned talk about you dying."

Callisto's smile vanished in an instant, and Themistocles eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

"So they are true then, or at least after a fashion," he said quietly. "I thought as much. One of those stories even says you died right down there on those beaches, suffocating in quicksand while Xena watched."

Callisto's jaw muscles worked hard against one another as the memories came back to her; her heart pounding in her chest, her lungs burning, and her muscles straining desperately against hard, unyielding sand.

"When I heard it the first time, I didn't believe it," Themistocles continued. "Now I do though, and so did the people of Delphi. They had to. They'd been living in such crippling fear of you for so long, can you imagine what it meant to them to believe you were dead?"

Callisto remained silent, staring out over the waves at the distant shoreline drawing inexorably closer.

Themistocles spoke again, and this time his voice had taken on a hardened edge. "Now try and imagine how they'd feel if they were to find out that you were still alive, healthy and fit as the day you were born. After everything you did, I don't think they'd be too happy, do you?" He paused and followed her eye line to the distant shore. "But I guess we won't have to wait that much longer to find out now will we?"

* * *

AUTHORS NOTE: Apologies that this update has taken so long. I've been extremely busy at work the last two months and just haven't had the energy to devote to writing as much as I'd like. I'm trying to get a little more on track with it, so i hope you can all bear with me while I potter along with this story. This is another fairly short chapter. I had originally planned for it to be longer, but when I looked at it, it just made sense to cut it in half with the latter half serving as chapter 3 which I'm part way through writing now. It's more kind of character building with me trying to find voices for the characters again, and trying to re-establish the relationships between the principles. Hope you all enjoy, and if anyone is starting here... I really don't envy you trying to keep up. Have fun, and hopefully the next update won't take nearly so long.


	4. Chapter Three: It Will Give You Peace

**Chapter Three: It Will Give You Peace...**

The cliffs towered high over the ship's deck and such was there height that they cast the entire of Drevus' vessel into shade where it bobbed at anchor.

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea," Ithius was saying as Callisto tied a bedroll close about a collection of basic travel provisions. Nearby, the crew were busy readying a small landing raft that was normally kept beneath waxed sheets in the ship's hold, tying ropes to metal pinions mounted in its sides, and hefting it on strong shoulders to lower it over the side and onto the waiting waves below.

"If you've got a better option as to how prevent the Delphi city watch stringing me up by my toenails when I go waltzing into their fair city, then believe me, I'm all ears," Callisto replied, straightening and slinging the pack across her shoulder as she did so.

At her request, Drevus had changed the ship's heading so that it would reach the coast somewhere to the east of Delphi. It was a region she knew reasonably well, a quiet stretch of beach that ran right up to the base of cliffs at the eastern edge of the black sand beach. She would be able to lie low here for a time, or at least as long as it took Ithius and the others to continue on with Themistocles and Adrasteia, sailing west up the coast to the Delphi port. One there they would hopefully be able to convince the city's authorities of the dangers they were facing and the need to accept Callisto as an ally.

"You know," Ithius was saying, "This might go easier if you came with us. If they could see you were sincere they might be more willing to reason..." He trailed off when she cocked an eyebrow at him.

"That's probably wishful thinking, isn't it?" he sighed.

"Oh, I'd say so, yes," Callisto said mockingly, then sighed too. "Look, Ithius, the last time I was here, the city guard locked me away in a granite walled cube with no windows and that smelled like the rear end of dysentery riddled goat. Then, just to make extra certain I wouldn't get away, they strapped me into the world's most uncomfortable chair and fed me gruel off the end of a four foot long pole pushed through bars in my cell's only door. They were terrified of me, and they were right to be. After all, when I finally managed to escape, I killed every jailer in that dungeon, and half the prisoners too." Ithius shifted uncomfortably at that last part, but Callisto carried on regardless. "I wasn't a nice person then, and to be honest, not much has changed in the intervening years. If they catch me again they might only do the same to me, and that in itself would be bad enough, but then who's to say they might not decide the hell with it and just have me executed on the spot? Are you willing to take that chance, because I'm most definitely not. This is the only way. I get off here and you guys go on ahead. Maybe without me around you can talk them into seeing the sense of letting me help against what's marching their way. If I was with you though..." she paused and shrugged. "Let's just say tempers might run hot, and I'd rather not die at the hands of an angry mob just when I'm getting the hang of this 'being alive' thing again."

Ithius pinched the bridge of his nose as if he could feel a headache coming on.

"Alright," he said. "You win. But at least let me come with you. If the Delphians hate you as much as you say they do-"

"They do."

"-then I can't imagine that the country around here will be that much safer for you." Ithius finished, ignoring her interruption. "You'll need someone with you to watch your back out there."

Callisto gave him a mocking smile.

"Why Ithius, how sweet of you. Much as I appreciate the gesture however, your concern is quite misplaced. The Delphi city guard might just be able to take me..." she paused to think about that for a moment. "...if there were twenty of them and I had my hands tied behind my back, but the local dirt farmers in the surrounding countryside, well, let's just say I don't rate their chances anywhere near as high. I think I'll be able to manage just fine on my own."

"And besides, she's already got someone to watch her back."

Callisto frowned suddenly at the sound of the familiar voice as Athelis stepped up to join them, a similar pack to her own hanging at his side.

"What's this now?" she said, nodding toward his pack and having a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer.

"I'm coming with you," was his blunt reply.

Callisto just scowled at him.

"I don't seem to recall inviting you."

"That's because you didn't." Athelis took a step closer to her. "Doesn't change the fact that you need me with you."

Callisto shook her head at him.

"All evidence to the contrary."

Athelis' jaw muscles flexed, and he straightened slightly.

"I grew up in this country. You just terrorised it. I know the lay of the land better than you."

"I know it as well as I need to."

Athelis puffed out his chest slightly. "You can't stop me coming along," he said firmly.

Callisto shot him a dangerous look then turned to Ithius and smiled sweetly.

"Ithius my dear, would you give us a moment. I need to knock some sense into our morose friend here."

Ithius glanced between the two of them, then gave a slight shrug.

"You two want to have at it, then who am I to interfere?" He nodded back over his shoulder to where some of his people – the last surviving Helots – were beginning to muster on the deck in preparation of disembarking later in the day. "If you need me I'll be right over there."

Callisto did not even bother to reply, instead rounding on Athelis sharply, fire blazing behind her eyes. The former mercenary wilted under her glare, but only slightly.

"You don't want me along," he said trying to head off her fury. "I get that, but it's not your choice. If I decide to follow you, there's nothing you can do."

"Is that right?" Callisto said, her voice taking on a dangerous edge. "I could just smash both your knee caps and leave you here whimpering in agony. Do you think that would do the trick?"

The line of Athelis' mouth thinned but he stood his ground.

"Okay," he said. "Fine. You don't need me." He paused. "But I _do_ need you."

Callisto's frown turned quizzical.

"Why?"

"You know why," Athelis replied hotly. "You and me, we want the same things."

Callisto rubbed a finger under nose and sniffed dismissively.

"Really? This again?" She turned her back on him and started off toward the edge of the ship where the crew were beginning to lower the landing raft over the side. "You don't know what it is you want, Athelis. You think you've lost everything, that you have nothing left, but I see a sister sitting over there who suggests otherwise."

"She doesn't understand," Athelis said darkly. "None of them do except you."

Callisto paused, glancing back at him over her shoulder as she did so. Who was she, really, to tell him he was wrong? His pain was real, the same as hers. Did the degree of it matter? She felt her teeth starting to grind together. Of course it did! He had lost a lot, it was true, and she could hardly blame him for wanting to seek revenge, but at the same time, he was kidding himself if he honestly thought he had nothing else left to lose and the fact that he did not seem to realise it was what infuriated her most about him.

"Fine," she snapped. "You can come, but enough with the brooding vengeance seeker act already. There's only room for one person to be pulling that around here, and that person is me, got it?"

Athelis gave her a grim half smile.

"Got it," he said, hefting his pack again.

"Good," Callisto nodded. "Now get yourself down onto the raft. It's already later in the day than I care for, and I want to be casting off soon."

Athelis returned her nod, then began to scramble down the coarse netting the crew had cast over the side to provide access to the raft. Callisto crossed to where she had left her sword earlier, propped against the side of the ship and scooped it up, securing it her across her back beside her pack before turning to follow Athelis down the netting.

"You didn't tell me why," came Ithius' voice from behind her.

Callisto frowned and turned to face him. He was standing with his arms folded while Athelis' sister, Adrasteia, was a pace or two back from him. Neither of them looked particularly happy.

"Huh?" she said. "What are you blathering about? I'm losing daylight here and I really don't have time to be playing twenty questions."

"The Delphians," Ithius said, taking a step toward her. "You told me they locked you up before. You didn't tell me why."

"Oh," Callisto said, "That." She shrugged. "It was years ago now. I'm sure the Oracle barely even remembers."

"You tried to kill her!"

"Oh come on! It's not like it was anything personal."

Ithius clapped a hand to his head and groaned.

"Yes, well, I'm sure that particular argument will make all the difference, won't it. It'll certainly help tip the scales when I'm trying to persuade the city guard to _not to have you executed you on sight!_ "

Callisto glanced past him at Adrasteia.

"This is her doing isn't it," she sneered. "She told you about this."

"What does it matter who told me?"

"Oh, it matters to me," Callisto hissed, eyeing Adrasteia angrily. "Answer the question. Was it her who told you?"

"Of course it was me who told him!" Adrasteia spat back at her before Ithius could answer. "And I was right to! After all, it's the truth, isn't it?"

Callisto smiled a smile that never even went near her eyes.

"It is indeed," she said. "I do have to wonder, though, why you felt the need to? Perhaps a little jealous that your long lost brother would rather step off this boat with me than sail home with you?"

"So he is going with you then?" Adrasteia said quietly. From the way her face twisted at the comment, Callisto knew she had just hit the nail square on the head.

"That he is," Callisto nodded, her grin widening. "You can come too if you like deary. You could keep an eye on me if you did. You know, just go on staring at me the way you have been doing these past few days."

Adrasteia's jaw tensed in the same way her brother's did when he grew angry, and Callisto's grin widened.

"What's the matter my sweet? Did you really think I hadn't noticed?"

"Don't call me that."

Callisto frowned.

"Call you what?"

"'My sweet'" Adrasteia replied. "Don't call me it. Or 'deary' or 'darling' or any other patronising pet name you think to throw my way."

"My, my," Callisto said, folding her arms across her chest and tilting her head slightly. "You are a sparky one." she glanced over at Ithius. "I do love to see a little fire every now and then."

She could see Adrasteia's jaw grinding hard.

"Just don't hurt him," the younger woman said, straining hard to keep her voice even. "I won't stand for it."

"You don't have a choice," Callisto fired back as she returned her full attention to her "Remember who it is you're talking to little girl. Do you really think that if I wanted to hurt your dear brother there is a single thing you could do to stop me?"

Adrasteia swallowed and shook her head.

"No," she said flatly.

"Then it's a good job for you that I don't want him hurt, isn't it."

"Not really," Adrasteia said. "You see, even when you say something like that, I don't think it matters, because I don't think you can help yourself."

Callisto frowned at her.

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You hurt people," Adrasteia said with a shrug as if she were stating something that was common knowledge. "It's just what you do, isn't it? You find a chink in their armour and exploit it. The saddest part is, I don't think you know how to stop yourself. You've been doing it so long now that it's almost instinctive. Can you honestly tell me that that's not the truth?"

This time it was Callisto's turn to grind her teeth together in impotent outrage.

"Alright," Ithius said, stepping between them. "That's enough, the pair of you. Adrasteia, go help with getting us ready to disembark. I don't want any delays once we dock at Delphi."

Adrasteia shot Callisto one last look that she could not quite read, then nodded to Ithius before making her way off across the deck again. Ithius himself took a deep breath, then turned to face Callisto square on.

"You know she's just trying to turn you against me, right?" Callisto said. "She doesn't like me. Hasn't done since she first laid eyes on me."

Ithius cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Because you're just such a warm and welcoming presence?" he said, and Callisto speared him with an impatient glare.

"You know what I mean," she snapped.

Ithius sighed and nodded.

"I do," he said. "Listen, Callisto, Adrasteia's young and confused. She's only ever heard the stories about you. You tried to kill the woman she serves, and wreaked havoc across the lands she calls home. She - along with half of Greece for that matter - thought you were dead and then suddenly, out of nowhere, you're rescuing her from rampaging Spartans and she ends up caught on a ship with you. Topping it all off, her prodigal brother is here as well, and trailing around after you like some kind of disciple. Can you blame her for being a little defensive? A little prickly?"

"Yes," Callisto said without hesitation. "Quite easily actually."

Ithius gave a snort of dry amusement before giving a rueful shake of his head.

"I swear you'll be the death of me," he said. "Look, the reason she told me what she did isn't important. You and I, we have an understanding. I think we can help each other, but that means we need to trust each other too. I shouldn't have had to hear about the Oracle from her first. You should have come to me with it already."

Callisto continued to glare at him angrily for a moment longer before giving dismissive sniff and looking away across the deck at nothing in particular.

"Alright," she said. "Point taken." She looked back at him and cocked her head slightly. "Will there be anything else?"

"Just be careful out there."

Callisto flashed him a sharp-toothed grin.

"Remind me, when exactly have I not been?" she asked innocently.

Ithius did not bother to answer. Instead, he just shook his head again, and set off across the deck in the same direction as Adrasteia.

* * *

The boat trip to shore was passed mainly in silence. Despite his eagerness to join up with her on the ship, now that they were alone together, Athelis seemed more than a little uncomfortable. They were not really alone of course. Two of Drevus' oarsmen had agreed to row the raft into shore, and than back to the ship again, but they were sitting further back and were of little note to Callisto.

She spent most of the short haul thinking about what Adrasteia had said to her. Was she right? Was she really only capable of causing pain and suffering wherever she went? Had she lived with it so long that it was really all she had left to offer to the world? Not for the first time, she wondered what had made Zeus and Hades choose her for this mission of theirs. She understood the practicality of the choice, but she did not understand why they even thought that she was remotely capable of what they were asking of her. They had promised her Elysium, but was that deal real, or just some carrot to dangle in front of her? Did they already know she could never achieve the task they had set her to? If that was the case, why choose her at all? Was she just some misdirection designed to deceive Cronus and his Followers while Zeus put some other plan into action? She would not put it past Zeus to have masterminded something like that. She had only met him twice before he had sent her back into the world, but she had been able to tell from even those two short meetings that his title as 'King of the Gods' was well deserved.

She frowned as a vague sensation of unease teased the back of her mind. Were those really the only two times she had met him; down in the Underworld before she had been returned to the world of the living? Her memories told her yes, but she had a feeling they were not entirely reliable. The Pneuma had left her with... gaps. Was that even the best way to think of it? Whatever she chose to call it, the truth was that what had taken place while she was under the Pneuma's influence was not clear. There were images and sensations she could vaguely recall, but every time she tried to cling to them, they evaporated like smoke slipping between her fingers. She could remember Perdicus, dead again and by her hand, Xena's grinning desiccated corpse, and her village filled with faceless corpses while another her mocked her and an inferno raged all about them. Among all those memories, there was another, one that stood out that bit more clearly than the rest. She could remember a new born star, blazing hot and fierce against a pitch night sky. Over it all, she could hear Zeus' voice, but the words were indistinct, as if they were coming at her across a distance so vast that only the vaguest hints of meaning remained. Concentrating, she strained to remember what he had been saying.

"The sun," Athelis said.

Callisto looked up from the boards beneath her feet. They were not far from shore now. Two hundred metres. Maybe less.

"What about it?" she said, only slightly irritated at being disturbed.

"It's past its zenith," Athelis said. "We've only got half a day's light left."

"More than enough for where we're going," Callisto replied. She clambered to her feet and turned to face the two oarsmen. "You don't need to take us all the way in. We're in the shallows now. We can walk from here."

The two men glanced at one another, then the lead shrugged.

"Whatever you say," he said, seeming almost visibly relieved that he would not have to be spending that much longer in her company.

Callisto could hardly blame him. These days she could hardly stand herself either.

Turning back to Athelis, she hefted her pack so it was high on her shoulder.

"You coming?" she asked, hopping over board as she did so. The water splashed loudly as her boots disappeared in the surf up to her calves. Athelis just nodded and followed suit.

The two of them wasted no time wading in land and padding up the beach, their boots squelching loudly as they went. Callisto paused for a moment as they finally cleared the water line, and took in the landscape around her. It was just as she remembered it. The intervening years had not changed it one little bit. Thick black sand stretched out for miles to her left, but less than a mile to her right. There it ended in a craggy stone cliff face. Ahead of her, the flat expanse of ocean flattened sand ended where it rolled upward into black dunes held together coarse, thick bladed grass, and beyond those dunes, green rolling hills scattered with woodland and occasional low lying scrub.

Closing her eyes, Callisto tried to shut out the constant wash of the ocean at her rear. In her mind's eye she could see it as clearly as if it were yesterday; the two chariots thundering along the waterfront, leaving twinned trails of churned and waterlogged sand in their wake.

The trails were gone now, washed away by the hundreds of high and low tides that had come and gone since, but the memories remained. She remembered the feeling of the adrenaline surging through her, of how she had bellowed her defiance into the wind as behind her, Xena's chariot had closed in. She had not cared about being caught of course, but wondered if she had known then she had but mere minutes to live, would it have changed anything? Probably not she was forced to admit. There, in that moment, the chase had been all that mattered to her. She had relished every minute of it, the sound and fury fueling her, the only things that had been able to make her feel alive. Was that still true, she wondered? Was the fire still all she lived for?

"Something wrong?" Athelis asked, and Callisto had to try hard to keep from starting at the interruption.

"It's nothing," she said, turning and stalking off toward the cliff face. "It's this way."

"What's 'this way'?"

"Just a little bolt hole of mine. We can use it to lay low until Ithius persuades the Delphians not to have me gutted on sight."

"And if he can't persuade them?"

Callisto gave a shrug.

"I'll confess, I hadn't really thought that far ahead."

"Do you ever?"

Callisto paused and glanced back over her shoulder at him.

"Do _you_ ever stop making inane little jibes? Or is it just easier to spend your life wallowing in your own self pity?"

"Not entirely sure I have the monopoly on that."

Callisto bared her teeth at him.

"No," she sneered. "You don't. Now come on. My boots aren't getting any dryer standing about in all this wet sand."

They traipsed on along the beach in silence, the cliff face looming larger and larger while its shadow retreated before them as the sun began to fall in the west. Before too long, they were standing at the cliff's base, in among outcroppings of sea weathered stone encrusted with barnacles and draped with still damp sea weed deposited by the last high tide.

"We can't make camp here," Athelis said. "The tide will be in before sunset, and when it comes this way the whole place will be under water."

"Not all of it," Callisto replied, gesturing for him to follow. Stepping beneath a rocky overhang where the ocean had bitten deep into the cliff, she traced the heavy wall of rock back several yards, finally stopping at a large outcrop of stone that cut the way short.

"In here," she said and Athelis glanced at her in confusion.

"In where?" he said, eyeing the stone. "There's nothing here."

"Behind the outcrop," Callisto said, gesturing again.

Athelis shot her a doubtful look but continued around the outcrop all the same, letting out a brief exclamation as he disappeared out of sight. Callisto allowed herself a small self satisfied smirk before following him.

Around the stone outcrop was another ocean carved opening. Here the constant battering of the waves had cut a hole roughly large enough for two people to fit through if they were walking abreast of one another. The natural tunnel beyond was not particularly long and sloped steeply upward. It had clearly been opened up by the concentrated efforts of nature at both ends, the ocean below and running water from above that even now was busy cutting its way into through the stone in a narrow cleft that ran down the middle of the tunnel. After only a few dozen feet or more, the tunnel opened out into a sizable cavern, lit from overhead by a long narrow shaft no more than a foot wide that stretched up and up through solid stone to the cliff top above.

Athelis was standing close to the centre of the chamber now, his neck craned back as he stared up the shaft.

"Well I'll be..." he breathed turning to face her as he heard her enter the cavern behind him. "Delphi was my home for most of my life, but I've never even heard about a place like this before."

"Guess you don't know this country half as well as you think you do, huh," Callisto goaded him.

"Guess not," Athelis said, not taking the bait and instead turning his attention back to the rest of the cavern. "But other people apparently do."

Callisto just nodded, looking around the cavern herself. It was strange being back here. It had been two years, or perhaps even more – she was not entirely how much time had passed during her numerous deaths and entrapments – yet the place was almost as she remembered it. Moldering furs and other animal skins lay strewn about the various rocky surfaces of the cave, an attempt at comfort by the previous occupants, and heavy iron brackets had been mounted to the walls with thick nails driven deep into the stone. The torches within the brackets, like the animal skins, were equally moldy, the dampness of the air eating away at them, while at the same time the salt from the ocean desiccated and cracked them. The rest of the cavern was filled with other discarded detritus. Broken ale mugs, a shattered tanning rack, and the scorched remnants of long dead campfires were among the debris. Narrowing her eyes she peered about the chamber until she found what she was looking for and felt her stomach tighten at the sight of it. It was exactly where she had left it.

"So..." Athelis began as she walked past him toward the rear most wall of the cavern. "...are you going to tell me how you know about this place?"

Callisto just shrugged.

"There's no real story behind it," she said. "My army tended to attract scum. You know the kind. Thieves, brigands, smugglers, mercenaries," she gave him a pointed look. "Lowlifes of every size and shape, and people like that also tend to attract attention. We needed a sanctuary between raids, and one of them knew about this dandy little cave here. I didn't really see any point in objecting. One place was as good as another, and it was fairly defensible what with only having two ways in or out."

"So what happened?"

"Hmmm?" she said, not really listening, her attention already elsewhere.

"C'mon," Athelis pushed. "This place looks like a hurricane blew through it. Are you seriously going to try and tell me there's not a story behind that?"

"Not one worth telling, no," she answered, gesturing for Athelis to be quiet.

She had reached the rearmost wall that was furthest from the cavern entrances – of which there were actually two – and as she did so, she stepped up onto an almost completely flat outcropping of stone. Upon it was sitting a single chair, quite incongruous alongside all the primitive animal hide rugs and other discarded mess that filled the rest of the cave. Like the torches on the walls, the damp and the sea salts had done much to weather it in the last few years, but it still managed to look sturdy nevertheless.

Stepping up to it, she reached out and ran her fingers gently over the coarse wood. It had become mottled over time, but just touching it brought back a whole host of memories. She remembered being secured to it in the prison cell in Delphi, the thick wooden frame and leather straps holding her fast while the guards had administered one of their many beatings. They had used cudgels mostly, having been afraid to take bladed weapons into the room with her. Imprisoned and restrained though she had been, the security on her had nevertheless been kept fairly tight.

She had not feared the pain that accompanied the beatings. Indeed, she had embraced it. It had been a way to feel alive, while trapped in that dark and dingy hole in earth. It had made her strong where it made other prisoners weak and given her the strength of will to continue where it had robbed others of so it. Somehow, just touching the chair now brought all that pain spiraling back into focus once more. She remembered seeing Xena strapped up in it, forced to watch while Callisto and her men prepared to burn her dear, sweet Gabrielle alive. The look on her enemy's face had been glorious. A beautiful and terrible mixture of fear and desperation as she struggled vainly to be free. Yes. It had been magnificent...

...and at the same time, she realised now, so utterly meaningless. So many had died for that one moment, and so many more had died after, and all for what? The image of Xena's dried and rotting corpse seated in a similar chair before a crackling hearth filled her mind, and all she could think of was how little pleasure any of it had given her in the end. Was Xena even dead? To the best of Callisto's knowledge, she was not, and where once that thought would have lit a fire inside her, now it failed to even create so much as a spark. Instead it was the thoughts of everything else she had done that made her hatred burn, of the life she had spent chasing something so completely worthless.

"It'll give you peace if you let it," she sneered, recoiling from the chair as if from a live cobra.

With a fearsome screech driven by the fury burning in her gut, she pivoted on her heel, and lashed out with a vicious side kick that tore the back of the chair clean off in a shower of splinters and dust. Backstepping, she lifted her leg high then brought her heel down hard on what remained of the chair's frame. There came a savage dry crunching sound, and the chair shattered into pieces, leaving Callisto standing among its remains, her chest heaving in with anger.

"Wow," Athelis said behind her, his voice completely deadpan. "Did the chair do something wrong?"

She rounded on him sharply.

"It's none of your concern," she snapped, stalking to the edge of the outcrop and hopping down from it. "Now come on. We need firewood."

Athelis gave her a steady look.

"firewood?" he said, a touch too evenly.

"You know," Callisto growled as if she were addressing a simpleton. "For a campfire."

Athelis just raised an eyebrow at her.

"Look," she continued. "We're probably going to be holed up here for a while – a couple of days at least I'd imagine – and trust me when I tell you, this place gets chilly after dark, so unless you want to spend the night freezing your hands and feet off, along with any other extremities that shall remain nameless, I suggest you get out onto the beach with me and start looking for driftwood."

Athelis nodded in mock understanding.

"So let me get this straight," he said. "We need to get driftwood."

"Driftwood," Callisto repeated.

"For a campfire."

Callisto nodded.

"By the gods, yes you nitwit! A campfire!"

Athelis glanced over her shoulder at the smashed chair.

"So all that screaming, kicking and smashing was for... what exactly?"

Callisto gritted her teeth together and leaned in close to him.

"Because," she snarled, "we're burning the chair first!"

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Happy New Year everybody! This is a short update, because originally this was going to be part of Chapter 2, but it didn't feel right there so it became its own little chapter. Things are going slow in these early chapters as I want to lock in where everyone is and what their states and stakes are. I hope you'll all bear with me as this story takes shape and begins to find its feet. Hopefully I'll be back soon with another update.

EDIT: A couple of small changes... nips and tucks here and there to the dialogue and prose.


	5. Chapter Four: Delphi

**Chapter Four: Delphi**

After the raft had deposited Callisto and Athelis on the shore and returned to the ship, Drevus and his crew wasted no time in departing. Midday light was already fading toward a chilly amber sunset as it plowed its way west, cleaving a wide V shape through the surf and hugging the coastline as close as the merchant captain dared without running the risk of beaching or holing the bottom of his vessel. Before long the Delphi docks were clearly visible and for the first time in a long while, Adrasteia finally felt one of several small knots of unease in her belly begin to loosen.

She was almost home.

Not that that really made her any safer of course. There was still a vast Spartan army winging its way northward toward them, and the visions she had when sleeping suggested that that army would not be so simply dealt with as some of those around her chose to believe. Still, the familiarity of home was enough to set her somewhat at ease, even if only temporarily.

The city itself was not visible as the ship drew nearer. Delphi itself was actually landlocked, being a league or so inland and out of sight and over those vivid green hills that grew up from the rear of the beach. As the spiritual centre for the surrounding region, and even for many of its neighbouring city states as well, Delphi could not afford to be without ocean access however, and so a well worn trail ran down from the city itself to connect it with this waterfront dock, thus making sure that despite its location, the city still had access to ship-borne travelers and merchants.

The dock complex they were approaching was practically a village in and of itself, with many local workers having elected to live at the docks themselves, rather than hike down from the city everyday. There were clusters of shacks, warehouses, grain silos, and even a small market square built there, and as the ship grew closer, Adrasteia could see that it was business as usual for many of those locals.

Another ship was already docked, a loading crane far larger and sturdier than the one she had seen at Tryxis hefting bolts of cloth and other heavy trade goods down onto the dock, while its crew and some warehouse workers unloaded that which was smaller and easier to carry down the vessels narrow gangplank.

She heard footsteps creaking on the deck behind her and turned to see Ithius approaching.

"Hey," she said by way of welcome. "We're coming into dock. Are your people ready?"

The tall man nodded.

"More than just ready," he said with a half smile. "They've been on the run so long, I think they can't wait to be able to stop looking over their shoulders every ten minutes for fear of seeing Spartan phalanxes coming over the hill."

Adrasteia smiled, but it was a forced one.

"If I'd been hiding out in the woods fearing for my life for over a month, I'd probably be feeling the same way," she said.

"How _do_ you feel?" Ithius asked, moving up to stand beside her. They were probably less than a kilometre from the dock now, and it was growing in size rapidly as they drew nearer and nearer. "I thought you'd be happy to be back, but you still seem a little..." he paused. "...disquieted."

She gave out a small sigh and leaned forward over the deck rail.

"Don't get me wrong," she said. "I'm glad to be back and have this mission of mine over and done with..."

"But?" Ithius prodded when she paused.

"...But there _are_ other things bothering me."

Ithius mirrored her gesture, leaning forward the same way.

"You and me both," he said.

"Care to share?" Adrasteia asked.

"Only if you go first," he replied. "I've seen you and Themistocles watching Callisto during the journey, like she's some kind of poisonous snake in our midst-"

"Isn't she?"

Ithius shot her a warning look.

"It's not like that," he said.

"Oh it's just that simple then is it?" she shot back a little too sharply. Taking a deep breath, she let out in a long exhale that she hoped would relax her somewhat, but try as she might she could not get the vision image of Callisto and her constantly shifting visage out of her mind. "Ithius, all I know is that this is Callisto we're talking about. _The_ Callisto. She tried to murder the Oracle, and that's not even the start of it. She's rampaged, pillaged and murdered her way across this entire land, and now she's gone running off into the wilds with my brother in tow. Who's to say what she'll get up to out there without us keeping an eye on her. We could end up facing two armies rather than one if we're not careful."

Ithius just shook his head.

"You've got her wrong. All of what you just said, maybe that's who she was. But it's not who she is now. Not any more."

She gave an exasperated groan, and turned away from him, staring hard at the docks. They would be landing in the next few minutes.

"Alright," she said, the sharpness returning to her voice. "Maybe you're right. Maybe she isn't the rampant psycho everyone thinks she is, but can you really blame them for thinking that? She certainly doesn't try to discourage that image. In fact, I'd say she actively does her best to cultivate encourage it, even with the people who are supposed to be her allies." She turned to face him again. "Don't think I haven't seen the way she treats you and my brother, and yet you both still trail around after her like she's some gods blessed saviour!"

Ithius regarded her for a moment, his brows knotted together in a studious expression.

"And what if that's exactly what she is?" he asked.

Adrasteia was almost speechless.

"You can't be serious," she said. When Ithius did not reply, her frown deepened. "Wait... You are serious, aren't you? Is that really what you believe? That she's some kind of champion?"

"Honestly?" Ithius said, then shrugged. "I don't know."

"But you think it might be true?" She clapped a hand across her mouth and tugged downward. "Does my brother believe it too?"

Ithius looked at her again.

"Your brother?" he said finally. "Is what this is about? Callisto and Athelis? Was she right?"

"No!" Adrasteia shook her head firmly as he frustration grew. "This isn't about her and him. This is about a mad King and his Spartan army marching toward my home! This is about a weird cult led by a creepy old man seemingly shadowing their every move, and bunch of nightmares that I can't stop myself from having showing me the end of the world!"

Suddenly her anger spluttered and the words piling up inside her died in her throat. Had she really just admitted to having the visions in front of Ithius? Themistocles and Nikias, and before them the Oracle, had all advised her to keep the nightmares secret. It was a secret she was seemingly completely unable to keep.

"Nightmares?" Ithius said, his frown deepening. "The end of the world?" he leaned closer toward her. "What are you talking about? What do you see when you sleep at night?"

Adrasteia took a step back, suddenly worried.

"It's nothing," she said. "Forget I said it."

Ithius shook his head.

"No," he said. "This is important. You're a handmaiden to the Oracle of Delphi. It means you could become an Oracle one day yourself, right?"

"Yes," she nodded, already knowing where his line of thought was taking him. "Operative word being 'could'"

"But then what if your nightmares aren't really nightmares at all?" Ithius pressed. "What if they're Oracular visions sent down from the gods?"

"And what if they are?" came a third voice. Adrasteia almost breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Themistocles approaching them.

All about them the ship had become a hive of activity as it began to glide into dock, the crew scurrying this way and that in an effort to get the vessel safely into port.

"Even if what she is seeing are messages from the gods, why would it be of any consequence to you?" the Athenian Archon continued as he stepped up to them. "Your people are safe, and Sparta is behind you. You are a free people now, able to come and go from here as you wish. Your part in this little adventure is over as soon as that gangplank touches down on the dock, so I ask again, of what concern are Adrasteia's nightmares to you?" Themistocles paused, studying the other man carefully. Ithius, for his part, said nothing.

"But that's not quite true it is it," the Archon pushed on, "You have your little deal with Callisto, to try and persuade the Oracle and the Temple Elders to allow her into the city. But why? What do you care what happens to her, and for that matter why would she even want to return here in the first place? One would have thought that, considering her history here, Delphi would be the last place she would seek to come to, at least without a full army at her back."

Ithius remained silent, his whole posture rigid like some kind of wild animal caught between fight or flight. Off in the distance a signal bell began to chime from the docks, followed by an answering chime from Delphi somewhere over the hills; a clear communication that a vessel had arrived in port.

Themistocles smiled dryly at the former Helot.

"Saved by the bell, eh." he said, stepping to one side to allow Ithius to pass him. "You should go and ready your people. I'm eager to see just how you explain yourself to the Oracle when the time comes. Maybe you could even explain to her who Mortius is?"

The name came out of nowhere. It meant nothing to Adrasteia, but Ithius looked as if the other man had just gut punched him. He started off almost immediately, pausing only to shoot Adrasteia a worried look as he went. She watched him go, then turned to see Themistocles scowling at her, the look of dry amusement he had adopted with Ithius already having disappeared.

"Look, I'm sorry, alright?" she said. "I don't know what came over me. He just managed to get under my skin and before I knew what I was saying..."

Before she could finish Themistocles gave a dismissive wave of his hand, making a visible effort to ease his features as he did so.

"What's done is done," he said, "but promise me you'll try not to do it again." He was doing his best to sound unconcerned, but Adrasteia was surprised when she could detect an edge of worry to his tone. Themistocles was usually much better at disguising his emotions than that.

"Is everything okay?"

"I just need you to be more careful than that. We don't know who we can trust. There's great danger on the horizon, and even if I couldn't feel it on the wind myself, your visions are clear evidence of it. For that reason alone they make you a target."

"A target?" Adrasteia's frown became worried. "For who?"

"For whoever it was they were sent to combat," he said, as if that were plainly obvious.

Adrasteia could feel that old knot of unease returning to her stomach.

"Is that what 'Mortius' is?" she asked, lowering her voice conspiratorially.

Themistocles gave a shrug of his shoulders.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't have had to drop the name in Ithius' lap to see what reaction it got," he said. "I know enough to know that Mortius is a who, not a what, but that's about the extent of it."

Adrasteia was really confused now.

"I don't understand. If you don't know who it is, how did you hear the name in the first place?"

"Eavesdropping," Themistocles said simply.

"Eavesdropping!?" she said, almost too loudly. Glancing at the people around her to make they weren't being listened to, she dropped her voice and leaned forward. "On who?!"

"Your brother of course."

Adrasteia felt her stomach tighten in the same way it had used to do when she and Athelis had been young and she had heard that he had just done something particularly stupid.

"My brother knows who this 'Mortius' is?"

Themistocles nodded.

"Oh yes. Ithius and Callisto too."

Adrasteia stood dumbfounded.

"I can't believe it."

"Believe it," Themistocles said. "There's a lot they know that they aren't telling us."

"But why?" Adrasteia said, not only confused now, but feeling betrayed as well. "Why wouldn't they tell us what they know? We're all on the same side aren't we?"

"Are we?" Themistocles gave a shake of his head. "Your brother and Ithius... well, its fairly clear where they have placed their loyalties, and Callisto being what she is makes it very difficult to predict where she's going to place her loyalty at any given time, or even once she has if she will still continue to honour it."

"So you're saying they don't trust us?"

"I'm saying not to trust them, or anyone else for that matter. At least not entirely. We've proven your brother is keeping secrets from us, and I guarantee you that this 'Mortius' – whoever he is – is not the worst of them. As for anyone else we might come across, remember that the Spartans aren't the only enemy we're facing. There's this Cult of the Followers too, and we have no idea quite how far their influence has spread. Anyone around us could secretly be a member. You mustn't ever forget that."

Adrasteia could feel the unease in her stomach growing as suddenly that feeling of returning home ceased to offer the same level of comfort it once had.

"Do you always think like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like everyone's carrying knives to stab you in the back with?"

Themistocles regarded her for a moment, then his face softened and he gave her one of his wry smiles.

"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't," he said in jest before turning serious once more. "You could stand to be a little less trusting yourself. You won't always have me watching your back."

Adrasteia frowned again.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" she asked, but before Themistocles could answer, the ship lurched slightly as it finally settled at its moorings.

"Well," Themistocles said, rubbing his hands together, seemingly eager to be off the vessel. "Here we are."

* * *

It did not take long for Adrasteia, Themistocles and the rest to get themselves disembarked. The main delay was with Captain Drevus. The rotund merchant captain had deliberately positioned himself by the gangplank, refusing to allow Themistocles off the ship until he had been paid in full. There was apparently still some debate over the exact amount he should be reimbursed for his services. The amount had been escalating throughout their voyage, but Themistocles silenced him quickly by handing over three of the jeweled rings he had been wearing on the journey south, and that he had then been carrying with him in a pouch since starting back north again. Any one of them would have been worth enough to pay for both the vessel's maintenance and the crews wages for a good year or more. Three of them was more than enough to simply buy the ship outright. Drevus' reaction upon seeing them was to almost salivate. Themistocles placed them in the captain's chubby hand one at a time with great purpose and finality. Drevus could barely speak as the Archon slapped him heartily on the shoulder and thanked him for his fine service before descending the gangplank.

"Did you really have to give him that much?" Adrasteia asked as she hurried along quickly behind him. Her father's business had provided for the family, but not well enough that the sight of such wanton disregard for wealth did not sting slightly. "Just one of those rings would have been enough."

"Probably," Themistocles replied. "But we're in a hurry. Precious minutes count and we could afford no more delays." He glanced back over his should at her. "And besides," he said with a wink, "cultivating an air of extreme wealth and almost ridiculous generosity never hurt anyone."

"Try telling that to Old Man Breegus," she muttered to herself under her breath.

Old Man Breegus had been a rich merchant. He had owned a wagon train that had rolled into Delphi once every three months or so. So successful was he that he had been prone to wearing silk and velvet robes depending on the season, and even going so far as to brocade his wagon seats and have his guard dressed in matching uniforms. Then one time – the last time the wagon train had arrived – it had not come according to its regular schedule. It had finally rolled into town a week later, It's finery torn and dirtied, its guard battered and bloodied, and Old Man Breegus himself nowhere to be seen.

Doing her best to put such grisly thoughts aside, she busied herself making sure everyone disembarked the vessel properly. Once everyone was gathered down on the dock, Ithius and his Helots included, Themistocles indicated that she should lead them onward. She was, after all, the local to these parts. Starting out, the group trudged up the dock past the curious and watchful eyes of the dockworkers, and Adrasteia suddenly found herself feeling uneasy as Themistocles' earlier words pushed there way back to the surface of her thoughts. Were there really members of the cult in the crowd watching her? Would there be others waiting in Delphi proper? She just did not know, and already it was almost more than she could stand.

Looking back, she saw Ithius walking not far behind her at the head of his people. Was Themistocles right about him? Could he really not be trusted? She honestly found that hard to believe. Despite their earlier harsh words, she did not dislike him. Indeed, there was something about him that she found intriguing. Unlike the rest of the Helots who seemed furtive and nervous as they shuffled along, carrying what few possessions they had been able to salvage in huddled bunches close to their chests, Ithius held himself straight backed and tall. It was almost the same way Themistocles carried himself, but in contrast to Themistocles, Ithius did not strut. His bearing was almost – _almost –_ regal, and yet there was compassion there too. She could see it behind his eyes, along with an even greater sadness. The last was all too easy to understand. He had been forced to watch, powerless to stop them as the Spartans had slaughtered the vast majority of his people, and then to take on the burden to try and lead them to safety. That he had saved as many as he had was no small miracle, but still she could see the deaths of the rest weighing heavy on him, as if he had somehow failed them all.

So why then had he thrown his lot in with Callisto? It just did not make sense to her. How was it a man like Ithius, so obviously a man of conscience and morals, could end up so utterly loyal to someone who represented almost the antithesis of both?

Her thoughts were cut short when she realised he had noticed her watching him, and she turned away again, trying hard not to blush as she focused hard on the road ahead of them.

They continued on together mainly in silence, the ragtag group making its way up the dock and on through the accompanying village. At first it was difficult to make good headway. Ithius' Helots kept stopping to take in their surroundings, and Ithius himself would have to drop back and chivy them gently onward, much to Themistocles' apparent irritation. Before long though, they were clear of the village and out on the trail that led up over the hills and on to Delphi itself. All the way, Adrasteia could feel more and more pairs of eyes on them but she did her best to ignore them. The days of inactivity on the ship had left them all relatively well rested - if still emotionally exhausted – and they made quick progress once they were beyond the dock and trudging up the gentle incline of the hillside.

They were only a half league or so when Themistocles, marching along at the head of the procession suddenly stopped short.

"What's the matter?" Adrasteia asked as she drew level with him, screwing up her eyes as she tried to track his eye line.

After a moment, she caught what he had sighted. A cloud of dust had begun to appear just above the line of the hill's crest. It was the kind of dust cloud kicked up by horses moving at a full gallop.

"Looks like the welcome committee's already heading to meet us," Themistocles said with a knowing look at her.

As if on cue, the bell she had heard ring while they were out to sea chimed again from the docks behind them. This time however, it was not a single dull signal chime, but a cacophonous crashing used to signal the approach of armed men.

Adrasteia tensed as she kept her eyes on the horizon, until, mere moments later, the cause of the dust cloud appeared. As she had expected, it was horses.

Lots and lots of horses.

They came thundering down the hillside toward the small procession, their hooves churning the dirt in their wake. Their riders looked like soldiers, wearing the dull brown boiled leather armour of the Delphi City Guard. On one side they carried shields made from a similar leather and on the other they carried regulation short swords. The rear most ranks had slung bows and quivers of scarlet flighted arrows.

Made up mainly from volunteers backed by a core of hardened professional soldiers, Adrasteia could remember being intimidated by the Guard when she had been a child. Vague memories of sitting on her father's shoulders and watching their weekly formation drills and sparring, while Athelis joined in with the junior members had made them seem invincible to her then. They had just seemed to move so precisely, every motion feeding the next until she could not quite tell where one move began and another ended.

Taking her more recent experiences into account however, she began to feel cold and creeping dread settling in the pit of her stomach. Next to the Spartan troops there was simply no comparison. Where the Demosthenes' soldiers had moved with pure, practiced precision, the Delphi Guard moved with a heaviness that made them appear lumbering by comparison. Their formation was not as tight and occasionally small gaps would open where one horse would outpace its rivals until reined back by its master. Their armour was more mismatched and ill fitting, and their weapons were not as well maintained. While still intimidating to her, she found herself wondering how they would ever be able to stand against the oncoming Spartan army.

As the mounted formation closed in, Adrasteia realised the horses were not slowing. Instinctively she took a step back toward the crowd of Helots who were already bunching up nervously. Ithius and Themistocles did not seem nervous at all, although she did note that Ithius had planted himself more firmly where he stood, legs parted and one arm slightly raised so that he could more easily go for his sword.

Just when it seemed as if the horses were about roll right over them, a shouted command from a voice that Adrasteia recognised immediately came from somewhere in the their midst, causing the formation to split in two, the soldiers guiding their mounts in twin flanking lines that quickly encircled the motley band of Helots before finally coming to a stop.

Adrasteia, still a little nervous but now somewhat less so, walked up to where Ithius and Themistocles were standing. Around her many of the horses pranced on the spot, their hooves churning the dirt and their nostrils flaring while their riders kept a firm grip on their reins. She noticed almost immediately that one of the riders was watching her. He was an average man in most respects, fair haired, middle aged and solidly built with a beard shot through with lines of stark white that ran down from the corners of his mouth to his chin. He would have been very handsome in his youth and the years had treated him kindly. His name was Barabus, and he was the captain of the Delpi City Guard, making him in effect the military leader of the city. In her time as a handmaiden, she had had relatively few dealings with him, but she knew him to be an honourable man, if somewhat stuffy. Now facing down he and his soldiers, she found herself hoping that her assessment of him was correct.

Carefully, so as not to startle any of the other horses, he guided his own animal forward toward them.

"Captain Barabus," Themistocles said with a nod that was almost respectful. "I'm glad to see that you've come to escort us on this final leg of our journey, though I do wonder as to how you knew of our return to be able to meet us so quickly."

Barabus regarded Themistocles silently for a moment, then gestured to one of his men. The man dismounted and led his horse level with Barabus'. Barabus himself also dismounted, decidedly more skillfully than the other man and handed him his mount's reins to hold.

"We've been watching for you," the captain said, his tone clipped and professional. "Your return is several days overdue. When you did not return on schedule the Oracle ordered a lookout placed. At the first sighting of Drevus' ship, a runner was sent, and so here we are."

Themistocles dealt with, he turned to Adrasteia.

"My Lady," he said, sweeping low with a deep bow. "The Great Pythia has been awaiting your return with great trepidation."

Adrasteia, already startled by such a display of deep reverence, almost choked on her own tongue.

"She has!?" she coughed, before swallowing and managing to compose herself. "I mean, she has?" she repeated this time in a more normal tone of voice.

"Indeed," Barabus nodded, straightening finally. "Your mission was one of great urgency after all. Rumours out of the south and Sparta in particular have continued in your absence, and with each day that has passed, the mood of the city has only grown more grave." His gaze shifted suspiciously to Ithius and the ragtag band of Helots standing further back from them. "It would appear that you've brought more than was originally tasked of you."

"Ah," Adrasteia said with a nod, "Them. I suppose they do deserve a little explanation." She stepped over to Ithius. The tall Helot leader was rigid as a board, but Adrasteia laid a hand gently on his arm to try and show him that everything would be alright. "Captain Barabus, allow me to introduce Ithius and his people, the Helots."

"Helots?" Barabus said, still eyeing them cautiously. "These people are slaves?"

She felt Ithius tense slightly at that.

"Were slaves," she corrected hurriedly. "And neither I nor the Archon Themistocles would be standing before you now if not for them. We owe them our lives captain."

Barabus' expression softened slightly and he gave Ithius a respectful nod.

"My thanks for ensuing the safety of our Lady Pythia's handmaiden," he said, and Adrasteia could not help but notice the way he did not include Themistocles in the statement.

"No thanks are necessary," Ithius said, his tone a little frosty after Barabus' slavery comment. "Our cause was theirs. They required sanctuary, as my people and I still do, and we were more than happy to help them find it."

"Presumably because it would mean sanctuary for yourselves in the future," Barabus replied and glanced at Adrasteia. She simply shrugged and he sagged slightly in response.

"Very well," he said. "You are welcome to return with us to Delphi, although once within the city walls it will be up to the Lady Pythia and the Temple Elders to decide what becomes of you. I _am_ forced to wonder what the Ephors of Sparta will make of our harbouring runaway..." he looked at Ithius and corrected what he had been about to say. "...servants."

"For the Ephors to care they'd have to still be alive," Adrasteia said, trying to take the conversation in a different direction. Themistocles shot her a warning look but it was too late. Barabus had already processed what she had said, and was turning to her, a scowl on his face.

"So they are dead then?" he said. "The rumours are true? "

"That would depend on what else the rumours say, but that one at least is true, yes."

Barabus' face turned dark, and his eyes became as steel.

"And Callisto," he said, his voice suddenly low and hate filled. "There are rumours that speak of her begin involved too. Are they also true?"

Before Adrasteia could reply, Themistocles was at her side.

"An excellent question," he said diplomatically. "But not one best asked now. We were sent south by your Lady Pythia to determine what was taking place down there-"

" _She_ was sent south, Archon," Barabus hissed, gesturing at Adrasteia and rounding on Themistocles at the same time, apparently angry at the interruption. "You were on some mission of your own."

"Be that as it may, your Oracle has been waiting rather a long time for her answers," Themistocles replied smoothly, but stepping forward at the same time, placing himself between Adrasteia and the guard captain. "How do you think she will feel when I tell her that you have kept her waiting even so much as one minute longer than was necessary?"

Barabus' nostrils flared, and he turned and stalked off back to his horse.

"Alright then," he said. "I'm a patient man. Whether I get my answers now or in the future makes little difference." He clambered up into the saddle and took the reins back in hand. "Now come. The Oracle awaits."

* * *

The trail up the hillside had always been well protected by patrols, and a tower built at the crest of the hill served as both lighthouse and watchtower for the guard to keep vigil over the vital link between the dock and the city itself. As a result, the remainder of the journey was uneventful. Barabus and his men formed up in a loose formation, trotting their horses along at a steady walk some fifty or so metres ahead of the Adrasteia and the rest.

As they continued on, Ithius fell into step beside her. After a moment of uncomfortable silence he finally spoke up.

"I wanted to thank you," he said. "for what you said to Barabus. It... um..." he paused, then shrugged. "It was good of you."

"Only a few days ago you saved my life," Adrasteia replied and smiled at him. "It would be kind of rude if I didn't at least try to return the favour." Her smile disappeared as she thought about where they were bound for.

"The Oracle," Ithius said, almost as if he could read her mind. "Do you think she'll listen to me?"

"About Callisto you mean?" Adrasteia said. "Who knows. The Oracle's not a vindictive sort, but this is Callisto we're talking about. Forgiveness doesn't come easy for people like her."

Ithius sighed and nodded.

"And so the cycle continues," he said before dropping back to walk beside the Helots.

Adrasteia frowned. What had he meant by that? She did not have very long to ponder. They were reaching the crest of the hill, and when they finally did, she stopped in her tracks, a sensation of relief like she had never felt before washing over her as she finally spied Delphi. The hill she was standing on was only one of a wide ranging ring of hills that stretched out to either side of her before circling back round to form a complete circle. Those hills directly to the north and east were lower than those to the south and west, their slopes more gradual and blanketed by thick woodland as a result. Within the ring of hills, the ground flattened out into a large grassy plain that some had nicknamed 'the navel of Gaia'. Despite the impressive title, it was a relatively unassuming patch of land, occasionally dotted with copses of trees and woodland, and the odd farm hear and there.

At almost the plain's exact centre was the city of Delphi itself. It was a far less monolithic city than Sparta, and it did not have the strict division of that city's inner and outer rings either. Instead it had a single outer wall of dull grey granite blocks, the occasional wooden guard post along its ramparts. From their position on the hilltop, Adrasteia could make out the buildings within. The Temple of Apollo was almost at the city's centre, a surprisingly humble building of the same stone as the city walls and broad double doors that led inside at the top of a series of steep steps. At the base of the steps was a large square filled with colourful market stalls and awnings, where all manner of tradesmen plied their wares. Surrounding it all was the city proper, a warren of densely packed stone and wood buildings, bisected by arches, narrow streets and even narrower alley ways. There was no single overriding style to the architecture as there had been in Sparta. Delphi was far too cosmopolitan for that, with settlers from all over Greece passing through the city, and in some cases, choosing to remain. By day the city simmered like a well cooked stew, and by night it was a haze of lit torches and drifting incense.

It was only after a moment or two of standing staring down at her home that she realised the Helots had stopped too.

"What do you think?" she asked, strolling over to Ithius.

The Helot leader just stood staring.

"It's like home," he said softly, and Adrasteia suddenly remembered the glorious explosion of colour and life that had been outer city of Helot Town around Sparta.

"Maybe it could be a new one," she said tentatively.

"Maybe," Ithius nodded, then glanced back over his shoulder. "For them at any rate. Not for me though I think."

Adrasteia frowned.

"Why not?"

"Just a feeling," Ithius said absently.

Ahead of them, Barabus had ordered his men to a halt, and was waiting impatiently, his own mount prancing beneath him as it sensed his agitation.

"What's the delay?" he demanded loudly, and Adrasteia shot Ithius and apologetic glance. Ithius in turn just smiled and rolled his eyes.

"No delay," she called back. "We just needed a break is all."

Barabus gave an irritated snort and turned his horse on the spot to start back toward the city again.

"Friendly sort isn't he," Ithius said. Adrasteia just shrugged.

"I heard he used to be, but that he lost his son a year or two ago, and that he hasn't been quite the same since."

Ithius fell silent, and Adrasteia suddenly realised he was watching the Delphian captain intently. He remained silent the rest of the way to the city, his gaze not once leaving Barabus' back. The captain glanced back at them once or twice, as if he could feel Ithius' eyes upon him, but if it bothered him, he showed no real concern.

The remainder of the journey to the city was easier than before, the down hill slope and open grassy plain proving decidedly easier to traverse than the up hill battle they had had before. They made good time as a result, and the sun was only just approaching the western horizon once they reached the city gates.

Open to travelers during the day, the gates were often closed up as sundown approached, and so they had been today. At a few terse words to their guards from Barabus however, they were soon swinging open once more, admitting the procession of guards and Helots to the city beyond.

With the sky still light, the city streets themselves were still a mass of people, though Adrasteia could tell from experience that the day's business was in its final throes and that soon the various businesses, stalls, artisans, and tradesmen would be shutting up shop for the day only to be replaced by the various thieves, cutpurses and nights watchmen that were the city's nightlife.

As soon as they were within the gates, her feet seemed to move by themselves, her memories of the city and its layout guiding her quickly and easily along while the Helots would occasionally stop and stare or shuffle uncertainly at junctions where it was not quite clear which way they should go. The feeling of returning home was a welcome one, but perhaps less so than it had been as little as an hour earlier. Delphi felt different to her now. She had only been gone a fortnight, but to her it felt like an eternity. She had seen and experienced so much in that time that the city could not help but feel smaller because of it. Where once it had been vast to her – her entire world even – now it just felt small and confined, a mere place in a larger world, where once it had been everything that mattered.

In less than a half hour they had reached the city centre and the market place she had spied from the hill top was already beginning to pack itself up for the day.

"Rumours about Sparta," Barabus offered by way of explanation for the early close of business. He had dismounted from his horse and was leading it across the square by the reins. The rest of his men had done the same. "Just rumours of course, but people are less willing to waste away their days in toil when there's a very real chance they might be dead in a week."

Adrasteia said nothing, keeping her eyes on the Temple of Apollo ahead of them. Ever since her visions had started, she had been seeking the answers behind them. When the Oracle had sent her south, she had hoped that those answers might be found in Sparta. In the end though, her journey had resulted only in more questions, and now as before, her mistress the Oracle was the best hope of understanding. Still she found her steps becoming more and more leaden. So much blood had already been spilled that she was beginning to dread how much more there would be to come. Were the answers to her visions enough to stop it, or were they floodgates holding back the deluge? She honestly was not sure anymore.

She was spared anymore grim thoughts as the procession reached the foot of the steps that ascended to the temple doors. Already those great doors were loudly creaking open and before they were even barely halfway there, an old man clad white hooded robes trimmed in stark red came sweeping out of the shade within, a retinue of similarly attired but less grandiose followers trailing in his wake.

The man had a neatly trimmed beard, white in the front and dark grey on the cheeks that had been carefully cut to sweep up his angular face in too neat lines. Despite his years, there was a life and verve to him that was not often found in people half his age. His step was brisk and authoritative, and his gaze was sharp, almost hawk-like as it took in the procession at the foot of the steps.

"Captain," he said, spotting Barabus standing at the head of the group. His voice cracked like a whip as he spoke and Barabus straightened sharply. "You have a lot of explaining to do. You have a lot of explaining to do. The ship was sighted hours ago. We sent you out to return the Lady Pythia's handmaiden to us. Not to waste half the day rounding up stray whoever-these-people are."

"And he did return me," Adrasteia said, speaking louder than normal as she stepped out from the crowd of Helots. "It is good to see you again High Priest Aegon."

The old man Aegon turned, and as his eyes met hers his face split in a relieved smile.

"Adrasteia my child, you have no idea how much it warms my heart to see you alive. We were beginning to fear the worst."

He moved to embrace her and Adrasteia and she returned the welcoming hug with only slightly less enthusiasm. Aegon had been the closest thing she could call to a father since her own father had passed away. Her father and he had been friends in life, before Aegon had come to the priesthood of Apollo, and it had been he who had come to her when the family business had collapsed, offering her a place in the temple as a means to take care of her mother. He had objected to her being sent to Sparta at first, but a private meeting with the Oracle had somehow seen him persuaded to withdraw his protest. Still, it had also been he that had assigned Nikias to her as her 'servant' although it was now perfectly clear to her the real reason Nikias had been sent along.

"Worst is an entirely relative term Aegon," Themistocles interjected smoothly as he also emerged from the crowd of people. "I'm afraid to say that even our worst fears may not be entirely adequate to the truth of what we discovered in Sparta."

"Ah," Aegon said, parting from Adrasteia. "General Themistocles..."

" _Archon_ ," Themistocles corrected him with a cold smile.

Aegon nodded.

"Ah yes," he said, a note of distaste creeping into his tone at the other man's title. "Quite. Your people did you vote you into that position didn't they. Still, I suppose it is good to see you alive and well also." His eyes narrowed searchingly as he swept his gaze back and forth across the crowd in front of him. "But where's Master Nikias? I do recall sending him..." His voice trailed off as he saw Adrasteia's face turn ashen.

"I see," he finished and fell silent for a moment causing a number of the Helots to shift uncomfortably, the few belongings they had managed to salvage clattering together almost deafeningly in the sudden silence. Aegon looked up at them cleared his throat, Nikias' loss put aside for the moment.

"I presume somebody is about to tell me who these people are?"

"Our saviours," Themistocles replied sternly. "That is all that need be said and it has been said once _already_ today. Further explanation will have to wait. Times is of the essence, and we have precious little of it remaining. Now if you please Aegon, we really must be shown to the Oracle immediately."

Aegon regarded the Athenian for a moment then gestured to one of his retinue, a youngish man with pale skin and a beak-like nose. The man hurried forward and Aegon whispered something in his ear. The man then dropped a respectful bow, first to Aegon, then Adrasteia and Themistocles before turning and hurrying off into the temple.

"Audiences are over for today," Aegon said, straightening as he turned back to Themistocles, his voice taking on the sonorous gravitas he so often adopted at Temple gatherings. For a moment Adrasteia worried that they might have to wait until the next day to be allowed to see the Oracle, but then Aegon glanced over at her and the corner of his mouth crept upward in a sly smile. "However, the Lady Pythia has been eagerly awaiting the return of her favourite handmaiden, and has left specific instructions for the Lady Adrasteia to be shown to her immediately upon her arrival at the temple. Should the good Archon ask it of her, I am sure the Lady Adrasteia would permit him to accompany her in her audience."

Adrasteia swallowed nervously and glanced at Themistocles. She had expected him to be outraged. Instead he simply gave her a knowing wink and dropped to one knee.

"My Lady," he began. "If it so pleases you, I humbly request-"

"Granted!" she said hurriedly, suddenly embarrassed. Themistocles bowed his head in mock gratefulness, then began to rise again.

"My thanks," he said, still grinning. Adrasteia just wanted to punch him.

"Well if that's settled-" Aegon began.

"Sorry but no," Adrasteia cut in yet again. "There's someone else I'd like to accompany me. Ithius. Could you step forward please."

The tall Helot leader stepped out of the crowd, and Adrasteia quickly started speaking again before Aegon could offer any kind of protest.

"Archon Themistocles was not being disingenuous when he said these people were our saviours," she said. "They took us in and protected us when all others had turned against us. Our friend Ithius is chief among them, and he also has cause to speak with the Lady Pythia."

Ithius did not say anything. Instead he just bowed his head to her, but unlike Themistocles, the respect in the gesture was genuine. Aegon had lifted a hand to his chin and was stroking at his bears as he regarded Ithius and the Helots with new found interest.

"Curiouser and Curiouser," he muttered almost under his breath. Then, suddenly, he nodded as if he had finally persuaded himself of something.

"As the Lady wishes," he said, then turned to face the remainder of his retinue. "The Lady Adrasteia, Archon Themistocles, their companion Master Ithius and Captain Barabus shall be accompanying me. Barabus frowned at his unexpected inclusion but said nothing.

"Please see that Master Ithius' people are given food and shelter and suitably cared for. They look they could all use a hot bowl of broth and a nice soft palette to bed down in for the night."

"My thanks High Priest," Ithius said graciously, causing the older man to give an embarrassed cough, probably reminded of his earlier outburst when they had they had first arrived on the temple steps.

"Yes, well," he muttered, then gestured to them as he started up the steps. "If you would all kindly follow me, the Lady Pythia has had a busy day, and the sooner this is over with, the sooner she can get her rest."

With that, he swept off up the steps and into the temple, Adrasteia and the others trailing behind him. Once inside the temple they progressed quickly, passing through several small antechambers and corridors before emerging into the main altar chamber proper. As they began to cross it, Adrasteia paused at the door, taking in the space around her. Once it had seemed vast to her. Now, just like with the city outside, she was all too keenly aware of how much more cramped the temple felt than it ever had before. All around her wafting clouds of incense drifted from the gold sconces hanging from the walls, giving the air claustrophobic haze not helped by the thick, smoke stained wall hangings and the hundreds of wreathes and garlands of flowers festooned all about them in offering to the Oracle.

"Something the matter?" Themistocles asked when he realised she had paused close to the centre of the chamber.

"It's just..." she sighed wearily. "Everything just seems smaller is all."

He offered her a sympathetic smile.

"Having your horizons broadened will tend to do that," he said. "But trust me. You'll be all the better person for it."

Adrasteia glanced around the chamber one last time, then set her jaw and nodded, more for herself than for anyone else.

"I hope so," she said, stepping past him.

Once they reached the centre of the chamber, Aegon gestured for them to stop.

"If you would all kindly wait a moment," he said, giving a sideways glance to Adrasteia that indicated he wanted her to remain too, then turned on his heel and strode off to disappear through a small service door at the rear of the chamber.

The four of them stood in silence for a while, Barabus a couple of steps back from the rest of them, his eyes trained warily on Ithius and Themistocles.

"This is your first time coming here, isn't it?" Themistocles said to Ithius after a several long uncomfortable minutes.

The Helot leader gave a small nod.

"It is."

"Well?" Themistocles cajoled him. "What do you think?"

"It's..." Ithius began, then paused and looked around the chamber as if he were really paying attention for the first time. "...colourful," he finished.

"Isn't it just," Themistocles said with a dry smile. "The Delphians love a good ceremony. They change the flowers every day you know. Apollo is the God of light and life after all. Wouldn't really be honouring him if you kept a bunch of dying carnations about the place would it."

Ithius just shrugged and the brief conversation ended with them lapsing back into silence, but not for much longer as it turned out. Somewhere from deeper within the temple a gong was struck, followed immediately by a slow and steady bass drum beat occasionally punctuated the clacking of sticks against one another.

Adrasteia could barely keep from rolling her eyes. They were really going to go through the whole ceremony? She sighed. This could end up taking a while. Next to her Ithius shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and she found herself wondering if he was nervous at all. He had been born and grown up in the shadow of Sparta, and even though his own people had been more lively than the dour Spartans, comparing that culture to the sheer wash of sound and colour that was Delphi must still have been somewhat overwhelming for him.

Before she could give the issue any deeper thought, the sound of the drumming grew louder, and the large double doors to the rear of the chamber swung open, admitting a group of some eight temple clergy carrying a broad palette on their shoulders. The palette itself was adorned with the same explosion of bright flowers wreaths as the rest of chamber. At the centre of it all, seated in a large but backless chair and dressed in a diaphanous white gown was the Oracle herself. Her relative youth took a great many people by surprise. She was probably not much more than thirty years of age, with smooth olive skin and a mass of hair fashioned in tight ringlets and blacks as a moonless night. Around her forehead, a gold threaded band held her hair back, and around her upper arms and wrists were serpentine bracelets adorned with golden suns of Apollo.

Behind the palette came the Oracle's entourage of Priests and handmaidens, and after them came the drummers Adrasteia had noticed earlier. The procession continued on up the chamber until they reached a broad space kept free of flowers and offerings before the altar of Apollo. There the palette was set down to a crescendo of thundering drums and clattering sticks before a complete silence fell over the chamber.

"My Lady Pythia," One of the attendants began to intone sonorously, "Blessed of Apollo, instrument of his divine will-"

The Oracle did not speak, but instead raised her hand, silencing the attendant with a gesture. The man's brows drew together in confusion, and he glanced over at Aegon. The head priest just nodded at him, to which the attendant shrugged and remained silent.

The Oracle motioned to Aegon, who made his way over and kneeling at her side. She then leaned in close, whispering something in his ear. Aegon did not look particularly happy at what he was hearing, but when she had finished he stood and waved away the retinue that had accompanied them.

"If you could all please leave," he said. "The Lady Pythia has requested privacy."

There were a few confused looks traded back and forth among the entourage at the strange request, but after a moment they all seemed to accept it and turned to file out of the chamber through various side exits. The Oracle watched them leave, her eyes narrowed as they filed out one by one, and it was only now she had a chance to inspect her mistress more closely that Adrasteia saw the dark circles beneath her eyes and the slightly sallow tint that had crept over her skin.

Once the last of her attendants and handmaiden's had left, the Oracle sagged slightly in her seat, her shoulders drooping in exhaustion. Aegon was immediately at her side, offering her a hand as he helped her down from the palette to a nearby row of cushioned benches provided for the comfort of those visitors to the temple blessed with either riches or power, and frequently both.

"Are you alright my lady?" Adrasteia asked, taking a stop forward only to stop in her tracks when the Oracle motioned for her to be still.

"I thought they'd never leave," her mistress said after a long weary sigh. She looked up at Aegon. "Must we really stand on ceremony every time?"

"I didn't make the traditions," Aegon replied. "I'll admit they can be a bit long in the tooth at times..."

"Neverending more like," the Oracle said.

"...but they mean something to the people," Aegon finished with a sour look at the woman he was charged to serve. "They give them hope for the future, as I might add, do you. Surely you can see the benefit of that, especially now with the world seemingly going mad all around us."

The Oracle took a deep breath and straightened in her seat, a little of the spirit Adrasteia remembered from her finally returning.

"I still say they could be nipped a little here, or tucked a little there," she said, then turned her attention back to the rest of the group.

"Captain Barabus, I bid you welcome, Archon Themistocles I bid you welcome back." Her gaze shifted to Adrasteia and her expression softened slightly. "And to you, my faithful handmaiden, I bid you welcome home."

Adrasteia dropped a gracious curtsy as best she could in her travel stained clothes.

"Aegon has already told me of Nikias' loss," the Oracle continued. "I am sorry you had to endure it, but I imagine it is not the worst of everything you have seen and experienced since you left us those few short weeks ago."

Adrasteia straightened.

"It was not my Lady," Adrasteia replied. "But his death is what I regret the most." For a moment the memory of a two Spartan soldiers with daggers in them lying perfectly still on the ground flashed in her mind. Those had been her daggers.

The Oracle glanced down at her hands and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Indeed," she said and Adrasteia checked herself when she had been wringing them together in a washing motion.

"Still," the Oracle continued, turning back to the rest of the group, "you have returned through trial and tribulation, bringing us news of exactly what it is our Spartan neighbours have been up to recently." she glanced at Ithius. "But that's not all you've brought it would seem."

Adrasteia had seen kings grow uncomfortable under her mistress' watchful gaze. Ithiusdid not so much as blink.

"It is an honour to be here, Great Pythia," he said with a bow of his head.

"A Spartan?" the Oracle said at his use of the Spartan kingly honourific and tilted her head curiously. "But yet you do not carry yourself like one."

"I am no Spartan," Ithius said. "Just a lowly Helot."

The Oracle's eyebrows raised in surprise at that.

"So far from home," she said. "It's not often we see your kind so far from home. As I understand it your Spartan masters seldom let you off your leashes."

Ithius tensed at that; a fact that did not go unnoticed by the Oracle.

"Leashed no longer it would seem," she mused. "An unexpected turn of events." She looked back to Themistocles. "It would seem you all have quite the story to tell."

Indeed they did, and it was quite some time in the telling. Themistocles related most of it, with occasional contributions from Adrasteia and Ithius by way of elaboration or explanation. Ithius expanded on some of the events that had taken place prior to the loss of King Leonidas and Demosthenes' ascension. Though he had told them some of what had happened already, there were other parts of the telling that were new even to Adrasteia, such as the Followers presence in an ancient tomb of a Spartan king and how they had discovered a long thought lost supply of Pneuma. That last part seemed particularly troubling to the Oracle, but she did not interrupt, remaining silent as the rest of the tale was told. Throughout, Adrasteia noted that mention of Callisto and her involvement was kept vague by both Themistocles and Ithius, and that her name in particular was never once mentioned. By the time they had finished Aegon had turned pale. The Oracle however, looked thoughtful, her hands resting calmly in her lap.

"They're coming here?" Aegon was spluttering in astonishment. "Now? What is it Demosthenes hopes to achieve?"

"Conquest," Themistocles replied simply. "He believes that the only way to stand against the Persians is to unite all of Greece, and that the only way to do that is to bring the rest of us to heel first."

"That's insanity! How does fighting a war among ourselves prepare us for a war against an enemy like Xerxes!? And why us? What harm has Delphi ever done Sparta? Or anyone else for that matter? Sparta and all the rest come to us for guidance! We're a people of peace, not war!"

"And you're in his way," Themistocles said sharply, cutting the priest short before he could continue anyfurther. "You're asking for reason from a man who has already betrayed a Spartan King to his death, and usurped power from the rightful rulers of a city before having them all put to death. Demosthenes was a great king once, proud yes, but reasonable in his own way. Unfortunately for us, those days are behind him. The loss at Marathon was a blow to him like no other. He blames both the gods and us for the Spartan casualties there. He believes he was abandoned, forsaken in his hour of need, and he has been nothing but bitter and hate filled ever since. Under the circumstances Aegon, my only surprise is that we did not face this from him sooner."

Aegon was about to reply when next to him, the Oracle raised her hand, causing him to fall silent.

"Demosthenes is a threat," she said, her voice completely calm. "Of that we are all agreed. But there is something more insidious at work here." She leaned forward in her seat, her eyes drifting across the three of them "These Followers," she pushed. "You all say they are involved, that Demosthenes has cast aside his worship of Ares, is counted among their number, and that this coup of his may very well have even been aided by them..." she paused and fixed Ithius with a steady stare. "... but that is not all is it? _You_ know more about them than you have told us and I, for one, would like to know exactly how much more."

Ithius glanced around the people whose eyes were now all trained on him as if he were judging just who he could trust before finally speaking.

"There is more," he grudgingly admitted. "The Followers are Cronus worshipers. You all know that, but I think that's only the half of it. Based on what I've learned from others, I think they honestly believe that they can free him, and that Demosthenes' war is the way to do it."

"Free him?" Themistocles said frowning. "You mean Cronus himself?"

Ithius nodded grimly and Adrasteia felt her stomach tighten. It barely bore thinking about... a Titan free to walk upon the Earth, and not just any Titan but their very king himself. The father of Zeus and the son of old Father Sky himself, Uranus. Was that why she was having the visions? Had the gods sent them to her as a warning about what might be coming? Was that the truth behind all of this? She hoped it was not, but a sinking feeling deep in her gut told her that it was, and that thought chilled her to the bone.

"This is absurd," Barabus snapped. "Cronus is sealed in Tartarus and has been since the end of the Titanomachy. The Olympians themselves put him there, to remain trapped for all eternity."

"Eternity is a long time," Themistocles said with a meaningful glance toward Adrasteia, and in that moment she knew he had had the same thought about her visions as she had. "A very long time indeed. Can even the gods remain vigilant for so long?"

"Are you saying that you doubt the gods?" Barabus snarled angrily, "That you actually believe this steaming pile of..." he gave up with a frustrated growl and turned back to the Oracle and Aegon. "High Priest Aegon, Lady Pythia; I ask that you don't listen to any more of this nonsense. The Spartans are a real threat, and they are on their way here now. They should be our primary concern. We should be talking about how to prepare for their arrival, what defences to put in place, how many men will be needed to hold the walls and so on. We should not be jumping at shadows and wasting precious time on this ridiculous-"

He stopped short as the Oracle again raised her hand for silence.

"Ridiculous?" she said once the city guard's captain had fallen silent. "Maybe. I myself am not so certain, but whether it is ridiculous or not – even true or not – is besides the point. What matters is that these people believe it. Perhaps even Demosthenes himself believes it, and if that is so, then we should endeavour to learn all we can about the Followers and their plans for the rest of us, if only so as to better counteract them. Wouldn't you agree Captain?"

Barabus clenched his teeth together in frustration momentarily, then sighed and gave a respectful bow of his head.

"As ever, there is wisdom in what you say my Lady," he said, suitably humbled. "May I ask however, how you propose we go about this?"

"Unless I am mistaken, the Followers are not unique to Sparta," The Oracle looked toward Aegon and Themistocles. "Am I correct?"

"You are," Themistocles nodded. "I've heard rumours of them having sects in Corinth and Thebes, and they have a small but growing following in Athens. I believe they may even have set up their own temple by the time I left."

"It's similar here," Aegon said. "Until as little as a month ago there local arm was operating within the city walls. More recently their numbers have been increasing to the point where the local temples to Zeus and Poseidon were less than comfortable with their presence and requested they leave the city. Their leader was not uncooperative. To the best of my knowledge they left the city just over a week ago."

"So where did they go?" Adrasteia asked, feeling somewhat nervous that the Followers suddenly seemed to be cropping up everywhere. Was it really the Spartans she sensed in her visions, or was the shapeless horde she saw really them?

"Not far," Aegon admitted. "I heard they had occupied one of the old temples to Zeus over on the coast – the ones that were abandoned some fifty years or so ago when the cult of Zeus elected to start a new temple within the city walls. They still send people back to the city for supplies every other day."

"Perhaps its time someone had a chat with these people?" Themistocles suggested to an accompanying nod from the Oracle.

"I could not agree more," she said. "Captain Barabus."

At the formal note in her voice, Barabus snapped to attention.

"Yes my Lady?" he said, his eyes fixed at some point in the middle distance.

"Do you know the temple Master Aegon is talking about?"

"I do my Lady."

"Then at first light you are to take a contingent of the guard and 'invite' this cult's leader to return to the city with you. There is much I wish to discuss with him."

Barabus bowed his head in acknowledgment.

"And if he doesn't wish to accept the invitation?" he said.

"You will make it clear to him that said invitation is not to be rejected."

"I understand perfectly my Lady." He lifted his head so that he could look at her again. "Now if I have your leave, I will be on my way. There are preparations I must make for the ride before I lose what little daylight is remaining to me."

"You have my leave to go Captain."

Barabus gave another gracious nod and turned to go. When he was half way across the hall, the Oracel leaned forward in her seat once more.

"Now," she said, looking at Ithius once more. "I would know more of what you know."

Ithius frowned.

"I've told you everything I know," he said.

"But not _how_ you know it," the Oracle countered smoothly. "You said you learned what you did of the Followers from others. Who were these others, and where are they now?"

Adrasteia glanced at Ithius out of the corner of her eye. The change in his posture had changed almost imperceptibly. He was still standing as rigid as if someone had tied him to a pole, but now there was a greater air of tension about him. This was it. The moment he had been preparing for where he had to come clean before the Oracle and tell her exactly who it was that was lurking out there in the wild country beyond the city walls. She saw him swallow and open his mouth to speak, but before her could, the double doors that led into the temple's main hall slammed open with a deafening crash.

The sheer retort of it made Adrasteia whirl on the spot, her heart practically in her mouth as beside her, Ithius and Themistocles did likewise. Barabus was standing almost at the doors, as surprised as the rest of them and already had his sword halfway from its scabbard. The weapon was unnecessary however. Standing in the door before the captain of the guard were two of his soldiers, dour and worried expressions on their faces as between them they were supporting an exhausted looking old woman.

"Therus," Barabus said sharply, addressing himself to the two men standing before him. "Maretes; I take it you have some explanation for this intrusion."

"Our apologies Captain," one of the two guards said – Adrasteia thought it might be Therus but she would not be certain. "We would not have disturbed you if it weren't urgent."

Barabus was standing with his back to Adrasteia but she could almost feel his eyes narrowing.

"No one is brought before the Lady Pythia without first being addressed to myself and High Priest Aegon-"

"My lord, please-" the old woman began, her voice cracked and pleading, but Barabus raised his voice and continued speaking over her.

"-No one. Not even a king. And this woman – whoever she is – is most certainly no king. Whatever she has to say can wait. The Lady Pythia has had a long day and-"

"Captain." It was the Oracle speaking now. She had risen from her seat and was making her way across the room toward the cluster of people by the door in smooth, gliding steps. "Is there something wrong with my voice?"

Barabus turned to regard her, a confused frown on his face.

"Of course not my Lady."

"Then why do you assume I cannot speak for myself?" she asked. Her tone never changed, but the rebuke was obvious. Barabus' jaw tightened, but he did not reply. Instead he merely dipped his head in a gesture of submission and stepped aside, allowing the Oracle to sweep past him.

"Now then," she continued, "I think a little more hospitality for our unexpected guest is in order. Aegon, some water please."

"As you wish my Lady," Aegon replied and disappeared off out of a side door.

"And you gentlemen," the Oracle continued, turning her attention back to the two guards. "Are you intending to leave this lady standing there until she drops dead of exhaustion?"

The guards glanced over at Barabus nervously but he just nodded.

"I thank you for your kindness, oh wise Oracle," the old woman breathed heavily as the guards helped her to one of the rearmost rows of seats.

"No thanks are necessary," the Oracle replied. "You have clearly traveled a long way and without much rest it would seem."

What the Oracle was saying was true. As the old woman was lowered into a seat, her trembling legs nearly gave out from under her as if they could barely support her even that little bit further. She was caked in dirt from her travels, and much of it had been streaked through with sweat while the straps of the sandals she wore had bitten deeply into the skin around her ankles and calves, causing rivulets of blood to dry and crust against her skin.

"It _has_ been a long road mistress," the old lady croaked. "I've barely stopped to eat or sleep these past few days, and I might not have made it to the city at all had the merchant caravan not picked me up this morning. I was fit to drop, so I was."

"It's true my Lady," the guard called Therus interjected. "The caravan she's talking about rolled into the city a little under a half hour ago. She was in the back of the rearmost wagon, ranting and raving about how we were all in terrible danger. The head of the caravan was more than happy to hand her over to us to deal with."

The sound of a door across the room swinging shut signaled Aegon's return, a young serving girl in tow carrying a platter with a single clay water pitcher and mug atop it. Adrasteia crossed quickly to them, gathering up the pitcher and mug and then hurrying back to the old woman's side. She was concerned for the woman's well being, but she also wanted to hear more of what she had to say.

"Here," she said gently, filling the mug almost to the rim before offering it the woman. "Drink some of this."

"Thank you," the old woman said gratefully, taking a mouthful of water, then breathing heavily before taking another.

"You say we're all in danger," Themistocles said. He had followed Adrasteia over and was now standing a short distance from them "From who or what exactly? Spartans?"

The old woman shook her head.

"Spartans stopped it," she said. "The raid I mean. The torture and the killing. Came in and made those others pull back." She took another gulp of water, then began to cough loudly. Adrasteia briefly thought the woman was about to choke to death in front of them, but in a moment she had managed to collect herself and the coughing subsided. "Hardly our saviours though. Didn't stop the executions. Just stood by and let 'em happen. Think they were more than happy to let her finish the few of us that had survived. Probably thought it was saving them the trouble, gods damn their hides."

Adrasteia frowned at that. _'Her'?_ She glanced at Themistocles, but the Athenian looked as confused as she felt.

"Go slowly please," he said. "And start at the beginning. Tell us exactly what happened."

The woman looked up at him, and then took a third gulp of water, this time draining the mug dry and grimacing when she finished.

"You don't happen to have anything a bit stronger do you?" she asked, looking hopefully toward Aegon.

"I'm sure it can be arranged," Themistocles said. " _If_ you tell us what happened first."

The woman gave a flinch at that, obviously not eager to relive such a terrible series of events. Still, after a moment she took a deep breath, her eyes losing focus as the fresh memories of whatever carnage it was she had witnessed returned to haunt her once more.

"It was just the raiders at first," she began. "They came out of nowhere. Hit the village like a bolt of Zeus' own lightnings, and had half the buildings in flames before we even knew what was going on. A few of the men tried to fight. It did no good. The raiders made messy work of them and would have done the same to the rest of us if the Spartans hadn't shown up. But the Spartans did show up. They just came marching right on in like they were afraid of nothing. Took control of everything, rounded us up. We thought maybe they going to take us prisoner, even make us slaves maybe, but no. They were just getting us together in one place so that _she_ could finish what her raiders had started. They executed everyone on her order," she swallowed, and Adrasteia could her eyes beginning to glisten wetly. "Glad my husband passed last year." she continued. "At least he was spared all of this. The rest of us won't be. They're headed this way, and I don't think anything's about to stop 'em."

"If they were rounding everyone up to execute..." Barabus said, "...if they were really as in control as you say, then how is it you escaped?"

Themistocles nodded.

"A very good question," he said. "A very good question indeed."

The old woman's far away gaze snapped back to the here and now, and she glanced between the two men.

"You really don't understand, do you?" she said. "I didn't escape. She let me go, with a message for you mistress."

The Oracle frowned.

"A message for me?"

"Aye," the old woman nodded. "She told me tell you, that years ago she left business unfinished in Delphi, and now you had all better be ready because she's coming back to finish the job."

"Who?" Adrasteia asked softly. She had a feeling she knew what the answer was going to be, even if that answer would not actually make any sense. "Who gave you that message? Did she tell you her name?"

The old woman shook her head.

"Didn't need her to tell me girl. I knew who she was as soon as I laid eyes on her. There's not a soul between here and Athens that wouldn't." She looked to the Oracle again, her face ashen, her eyes edged with panic. "It was Callisto Mistress. She's back."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A tough chapter to write, this one, mainly due to the number of characters floating in and out of dialogue. As usual, the story will be fairly slow to get up and going as there's a lot of set up needed and characters to be introduced. Hope you can all bear with me as I struggle through it. Anyway, hope you all enjoy and keep on reading...


	6. Chapter Five: Leftovers

**Chapter Five: Leftovers**

The night air was cold and still but far from silent. The sounds of men talking, and the clatter and crackle of utensils and cooking fires hovered at the edge of hearing; a nagging distraction that Mortius was doing his best to shut out.

He was kneeling in among long grasses, high on a hillside that overlooked the vast Spartan camp below. He had been doing this every night between marches, retreating into seclusion somewhere beyond the boundaries of the camp in an attempt to quiet his tumultuous thoughts and hear the voice of his Lord. So far though, he had had little success. His Lord Cronus remained worryingly silent to him, and vague memories of the Pneuma ritual he had put himself through before they had departed Sparta continued to haunt him. He could not remember the entirety of what he had seen under the Pneuma's influence, but he could remember that what was supposed to be a ritual to cleanse him of the myriad doubts and fears that had been building in his mind over recent weeks had instead only left him with even more of them. The clearest memory though, was of Callisto, dressed in the same black robes that he himself wore, sliding a knife between his ribs, then watching with a cold blooded indifference as he lay bleeding out at her feet.

At first he had tried to pretend that the visions meant nothing; that they were just the fevered imaginings of his own subconscious, given shape and life by the hallucinogenic properties of the Pneuma. Then _she_ had arrived, a monstrous creation, deposited on a beach in a torrent of fire and wearing Callisto's own face. After that, it had become increasingly difficult to pretend the vision had been nothing more than a fever dream.

Trying his best to change his train of thought, he turned his attention to the Spartan camp at the foot of the hill. It was undeniably impressive, practically a mobile city, packed up and carried with the army each day, and then diligently laid out in as close to an identical manner as the surrounding terrain would allow each night. The camp itself followed a grid pattern with tents being erected in blocks of four. These blocks were then divided and connected by wide grassy avenues that allowed easy movement between different sections of the camp. At the centre of each block, men from the four surrounding tents would set up campfires and sit around, idly chatting, cooking and tending to their weapons and armour as they attempted to recover from the day's hard march. A haze of smoke from the literally hundreds of camp fires hung over the tents like an early morning mist and it lenth the whole scene an eerie, almost dream-like quality.

Toward the centre of the camp was another array of tents, these ones far less orderly and uniform than those belonging to the soldiers that surrounded them. Like the soldiers' tents however, Mortius could see campfires burning in among them, along with a large crowd of crimson robed and hooded individuals, all kneeling before a similarly attired figure. Pelion, administering to their Lord's Followers with his usual dripping zeal no doubt.

When had that started he found himself suddenly wondering. When had he started thinking about Pelion's morning and evening preaching with such disgust? In truth it was not the preaching that bothered him so much as it was the man himself. Pelion had a talent or oratory, it was true, but he was also narcissistic and vainglorious, yet strangely insecure at the same time. His own love for himself was not enough. He needed that of everyone else too. Men so eager to please were not to be trusted. You could never be certain that what they said was how they felt, or rather what they simply wanted you to hear.

The more he had thought about it recently, the more he had begun to realise that Pelion himself may have even been the first time Mortius had doubted his Lord's judgment. At first he had thought the Spartan Oracle, Miranda – her life ended by his own hand over a month ago – had been the source of those doubts, but now he was not so sure. In the void that had been his prison, Cronus had been the lifeline that guided him back to reality when all others had otherwise failed or abandoned him. When he had taken his first breaths in what must have been close to a thousand years, it had all seemed so simple. Cronus had helped free him, had given him a chance to avenge himself upon those who had betrayed him, and for that he owed him is unswerving loyalty and devotion. Then however, he had seen the others his Lord would choose to follow him and those chosen had sickened and disgusted him. He could find no respect inside himself for the likes of Pelion, and now there was this new creature the old priest had conjured through his machinations. Even the potential he had seen in Demosthenes had become more and more lackluster and tarnished as time had gone on, and the Spartan King's own doubts and insecurities had begun to eat away at the core of him.

Even as he thought of Demosthenes, Mortius noticed a stirring close to the king's tent below. Pelion's sermon was wrapping up, and the Followers gathered around him were beginning to drift away. At the same time, a messenger was coming in from the camp's perimeter, the only person moving in the opposite direction to the flow of robed Followers. He was obviously delivering the latest reports to Demosthenes.

Mortius frowned beneath his hood.

Normally the reports were delivered earlier, and in good order. Tonight was different however. Not only was the messenger coming in late, but he seemed to be moving quicker than usual, his step brisk and agitated. Something was amiss, but what?

Reaching out, he envisioned the inside of tent, and in an instant the shadows on the hillside had stretched out to swallow him whole. The void that greeted him was chill but fleeting, and a moment later he was inside the tent.

Spartans did not believe in luxury, and Demosthenes' tent was a testimony to that. Other than a desk to work at, a straw filled dummy upon which to hang his armour, a chest for other belongings and a palette for sleeping, there was almost nothing else of note. A single lantern had been hung from a hook overhead and, along with a single candle next to Demosthenes himself, it was the main source of light within the tent.

Demosthenes was slumped in his seat, a small clay dish in front of him with pungent yellow fumes emanating from it. The Spartan King's eyes were rolled back in his head and his teeth were gritted as if he were in pain while sweat beaded on his forehead.

Clenching his fists, Mortius crossed the room without a sound, seizing the clay bowl and hurling it at the suit of armour on the straw dummy. On contact, the bowl shattered, leaving a sizzling dark stain upon the boiled leather breastplate. At the sudden crash, Demosthenes shot bolt upright in his seat, his eyes scanning rapidly back and forth across the room. It took him several moments to focus, as if he were emerging from a deep sleep, but when he finally did, his gaze quickly came to rest on Mortius.

"This again?" Mortius said, trying to remain impassive despite the frustration that had gripped him. "I thought we had agreed you would stop."

Demosthenes gave a small cough and sniffed, straightening in his seat as he did so.

"I don't recall any such discussion," he said. "In fact, as I recall it, it was _you_ decided I should stop. I strongly disagreed, and since I am King, and you are... whatever it is you are..."

Mortius felt his jaw muscles tighten angrily.

"I am the Soul," he hissed, leaning forward across the table as he did so and thrusting a finger in the direction of the stained armour. "Our Lord's will upon this earth. When I speak it is with his voice, and I say he needs you cogent; not drugged up on Pneuma to the point of insensibility!"

"And that's precisely why I'm doing this!" Demosthenes replied, rising from his seat and leaning toward Mortius in return. "This war hinges on me, Mortius! I cannot afford doubt, for doubt breeds fear, fear breeds inaction, and inaction is the death knell of any leader! With the Pneuma, I will face my fears and be their master, and when that is done, I will truly be the servant our Lord deserves!"

"If you don't lose yourself to those fears first."

Demosthenes straightened at that and folded his arms tightly across his chest.

"We were due a meeting over an hour ago," he said flatly, clearly trying to change the subject. "You were up in the hills again?"

Mortius nodded.

"Facing _your_ fears?" Demosthenes asked archly.

This time it was Mortius' turn to change the subject.

"You have a messenger coming," he said. "From the lateness of the hour I'm assuming it's not good news."

Demosthenes scowled and opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, a voice sounded from outside. It was one of the tent's guards.

"Great King," the muffled voice announced loudly. "Infantryman Pires is here with the watch reports."

Demosthenes shot Mortius an irritated glance then stepped over to grab his breastplate from the dummy, and settling it over his shoulders before making his war around the table to greet the messenger directly.

"Show him in," he said, buckling the straps that would hold the armour close about him.

The tent flaps parted, and a disheveled looking young man was allowed inside.

"Great King," he announced loudly, dropping to one knee and offering a ragged roll of parchment. "I bring you the night's watch reports."

"A little late for reading dispatches don't you think?" Demosthenes said, fastening the last strap, and pulling it tight before giving the man his full attention.

The kneeling man fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again there was an edge of trepidation to his tone.

"Your forgiveness Great King, but I was acting under orders."

Demosthenes' scowl deepened.

"Whose orders?"

"Watch Captain Theselon," the messenger replied. "He thought it best not to disturb you until the scouting party sent out to secure the route for tomorrow's march reported in."

"Well?" Demosthenes said in exasperation after another moment's silence. "What do they have to say for themselves? They've kept their King waiting after all."

The messenger looked up for the first time since entering the tent, visibly paling as he caught sight of Mortius standing off to one side.

"Great King," he said nervously. "They still have not reported in. Captain Theselon decided he could wait no longer and-"

Before the messenger could finish, Demosthenes was crossing the tent and snatching the rolled reports from his hands.

"Leave us," he said, and when the man hesitated he added, "now!"

The messenger straightened, dropped a respectful bow, and then, with one last glance toward Mortius, he shivered and left the tent. Mortius watched him go, waiting for the tent flaps to swing closed before crossing wordlessly to Demosthenes' side.

The Spartan King had the scroll unrolled now, and was clutching it between his fingers in a white knuckled death grip so tight it looked as if he might just tear the thing in half. His eyes scanned back and forth over the words scrawled across it, his rage and frustration at the contents almost palpable.

"Sentos again?" Mortius said not really needing an answer.

Demosthenes did not reply. He did not need to. The answer was self evident. Instead, he simply turned and stalked over to the desk, thrusting the scroll into the flame of the candle he had been using to write by. It only took a moment for the papyrus to catch fire, and before long the whole thing was aflame. Demosthenes held it until the flames were almost at his hand, then dropped it to the ground and crushed the fire beneath his boot. Stooping, he snatched up his sword from where it had been propped against the desk in its scabbard, then made his way for the exit, leaving the sputtering remains of the scroll as little more than a blackened smudge on the ground.

"This is the third time since we left Tryxis," Mortius continued, striding after the king.

"What?" Demosthenes snarled back at him. "Did you think I've lost count?" When he reached the tent flaps, he thrust them angrily apart and stalked out into the cool night air. "You," he snapped, thrusting his finger at one of the tent guards. "My horse. Now. And tell Caracticus that I want a full cavalry detachment to meet me at the northern end of the camp."

The Spartan dropped a bow and turned to hurry off and see his king's orders carried out.

"Is something the matter?" came Pelion's smooth and practiced tones. He was approaching them while leaning on his staff in that manner of affected frailty he had long since come to be a master of.

Demosthenes shot him a dirty look.

"We lost another scout unit," Mortius interjected by way of explanation.

Pelion sighed and shook his head.

" _We_ didn't _,"_ he said, _"He_ were his soldiers after all. Quite the trouble maker this Sentos is turning out to be. Maybe you should have killed him back in Sparta when you had the chance."

Demosthenes' top lip peeled back in a wordless snarl.

"So what now?" Pelion continued. "Another day's slowed march because you couldn't scout the road ahead? Another day watching you quake in fear at the possibility of assault from a single man in command of a force not even a third the size of this one?" The old man turned to Mortius. "These delays are becoming intolerable for our Lord. We should have been on Delphian soil yesterday. Instead we're still several days march away."

Mortius said nothing. Pelion was not entirely wrong and everyone knew it. Yet still Demosthenes refused to give the other man an inch.

"And if you were in charge?" the Spartan King snapped. "What would you have me do? Just march them up the trail into Gods know what danger without even a care as to what ambushes could be lying in wait around any corner?"

"I'm saying that you should start to accept that we are marching to war," Pelion answered with his usual studied calm. "Casualties are inevitable, if not even desirable. Our Lord can tolerate no more delays."

"And there shall be none." Demosthenes snarled back at him. "The route _will_ be scouted tonight, because _I_ will be doing so personally."

Pelion blinked.

"You?"

"Yes! I'm taking charge of Caracticus' cavalry unit and making sure the way ahead is safe for tomorrow's march."

"Sentos has spearmen," Mortius said quietly, and Demosthenes paused.

"Yes he does," he nodded eventually.

"Then taking cavalry is an extremely dangerous gambit. If he were to be lying in ambush for you-"

"He won't be," Demosthenes said firmly, his tone brooking no argument. "We've never sent out a second scouting party after the first before, and he won't be anticipating us to do so now. Spearmen are only a danger to cavalry when they know it's coming." As he was speaking, a young soldier appeared, leading Demosthenes' horse by the reins.

"Are Caracticus' men ready?" Demosthenes asked the young man as he came into view, and other man nodded.

"They are Great King,"

"Good," Demosthenes replied. With surprising elegance for a man of his size, he slung himself up into the animal's saddle, guiding it skillfully with his knees as he took the reins from the soldier.

"Now," he said, twisting at the hip so he could see Pelion, "where is that creature you conjured?"

"I'm not her keeper," Pelion said, sounding a little indignant at Demosthenes' brusqueness. "I have not seen her since yesterday."

"Well see to it that you find her. It's time she earned her keep. Night marches are a dangerous business at the best of times, and I'll need someone to watch my flanks out there. Better it be her than have me risking more of my men."

Pelion's jaw tightened visibly, but he said nothing. Demosthenes was Cronus' Strength, whether he liked it or not, and a King of Sparta to boot. In matters of military strategy he was to be obeyed without question, and that was simply that. Still, the old man's ego was colossal, and he was not one who took orders well.

"I will see to it that she is found," he said finally, then turned and headed off into the depths of the camp, Demosthenes watching him carefully the entire time. When he was finally gone, the Spartan sighed and rubbed a finger at his temple.

"That man..." he muttered, then glanced at Mortius. "He'll be the undoing of all of this, just mark my words."

"You should concern yourself less with Pelion, and more with your own duties," Mortius retorted. "Concentrate on scouting the road ahead. I will discover the fate of your scouts."

As he spoke, the long shadows cast by the various fires about them began to run together, like rainwater streaming from a rooftop to form a great dark pool behind him.

Demosthenes frowned.

"You?" he said. "But how-"

"I can move faster than even the fleetest of your horses should I have the need to," Mortius replied, and before Demosthenes could interrupt him again, he had turned on his heel and stepped into the waiting pool of shadow. They swept up and over him hungrily, the chill of the void beyond them clawing at not only his flesh but his very soul too. For a moment he resisted instinctively, then he remembered to calm himself and let them draw him in. He wondered briefly if this was how it felt to die, then an instant later he was gone and the shadows had returned to normal, leaving only the still night air in his wake.

* * *

In the hours after he departed the camp, Mortius progressed quickly down the main trail that Demosthenes' army had been following. Every league or so he would reemerge from the shadows, take stock of his location and then jump forward through the shadows again. Traveling in this manner he could cover distances in mere minutes that even men on horse back would take hours to traverse. Still, it was not without its trials. Every jump through that terrible twilight realm of shadow in the gaps between the worlds of the living and the dead taxed him in a way few, if any other than his Lord, could truly understand. In many ways he supposed, it felt like drowning, with each step back into the world being like coming up for air, and there always the chance that each time he went under again, he would not be able to find his way back to the surface. Still, when he remembered how long he had spent trapped in that realm with seemingly no way out, these brief returns began to look slight by comparison.

It was after an hour or so of searching for any signs of the scouting party that he decided he must have missed them and began to back track. The trail the army was following was far from straight, weaving its way across the countryside and around hills and valleys, woods and fields, and it would be all too easy to have missed them had he jumped even the slightest bit too far. It took another hour or so of painstaking searching and many more jumps, this time far more incremental, before he eventually came across the scouts.

Or at least what was left of them.

The scouting party had consisted of enough men to form a single phalanx, some sixty to seventy troops total, and judging by what Mortius found, the majority of those men had fallen in battle. The attack had happened just after the scouts had rounded a bend in the trail that led it around the foot of a large but gentle hill. Those that had not died had either fled – unlikely when dealing with Spartans – or been taken captive by their attackers. Whatever the fate of the soldiers, the attack itself had taken place hours before. That alone was obvious by simple virtue of the fact that Sentos' men had had time to arrange the bodies of the fallen respectfully beside the road, all with basic funerary rights already conducted. The only thing the rogue Spartan captain had not had time to do was actually bury or cremate anybody.

With barely a sound, Mortius began to move back and forth along the row of bodies, taking in every detail from both them, and the rest of his surroundings in an attempt to determine just what exactly had happened. That was how Demosthenes and his cavalry unit found him, kneeling among the dirt and studying the trail intently. Mortius himself was aware of their approach before they were even in view. The cavalary unit was large enough that the soft snorts of horses and the creak of the soldiers' armour was audible even at a distance.

The moment they rounded the bend, Demosthenes lifted his fist, bringing the column of mounted men behind him to a halt. Some of the horse men were carrying torches that lengthened the shadows, and as Mortius straightened to face them, those closest to him danced madly over the fallen bodies. Several of the soldiers shifted nervously in their saddles at the sight, but Demosthenes was unperturbed. He had long since grown accustomed to such strangeness around Mortius.

"How long have you been here?" he said, clambering down from his saddle.

"An hour," Mortius replied, looking over the hilltops to the east. The sky was slowly beginning to lighten as dawn crept closer and closer. "Perhaps a little more than that."

Demosthenes began to stride up the trail to meet him.

"And what did you find?"

"That Sentos is a better tactician than you might have given him credit," Mortius replied, then pointed with a pale hand back down the trail. "It's a blind bend. Your men slowed to make sure they weren't walking into an ambush. Thecoast was obviously clear so they proceeded along here." He swept his hand back down the trail. An almost indecipherable mass of footprints coated the muddy track, punctuated here and there with splashes of dried, dark crimson. "The geography made them anticipate an ambush from the front, so they adjusted their formation accordingly. A sensible precaution under most circumstances, but a predictable one."

Demosthenes was standing perfectly still, his eyes reading the footprints the same way Mortius' had.

"They turned," he said, his eyes alighting on particularly churned up patch of ground. "He hit them in the rear."

Mortius nodded.

"They were being followed for quite some time I believe. Sentos was waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. This bend gave him one."

From nearby there came a slow round of applause. Both men turned to see Callisto's bizarre doppelganger standing atop the hill nearby, a small collection of her ragtag band of thugs standing at her back. She was the only one clapping.

As they caught sight of her, she flashed them both a lopsided grin, and began to make her way down the hillside.

"Such a clever boy, Mortius," she said, still clapping as she walked. "Truly awe inspiring the way it took you a whole hour to figure out what happened. All that pacing and pondering you were doing... you looked so intense. You might want to be careful though. You could burst a blood vessel if you stretch yourself too much."

"You were watching me?" Mortius hissed as she walked up to him.

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you show yourselves?"

The doppelganger adopted a mock pained expression.

"What? Me? Spoil all that brooding and posturing you work so hard at? Never! After all, I know how much your image means to you."

Mortius said nothing, but he had to try hard not to ball his hands into fists at her jibes.

"I sent for you hours ago," Demosthenes interjected, glancing between the two of them. Your men were supposed to accompany mine, guard our flanks on the way here."

The doppelganger flashed him a dark look.

"Let's get one thing straight, you and me," She snarled. "You don't send for me little man. No one _sends_ for me. I'm no housebroken dog trained to come running and wagging my tail when you whistle."

This time it was Demosthenes' turn to have to hold his temper.

"This may be more than you are accustomed to..." he began, his voice low and hard-edged, "...but this is an army on the march. A true army, not some ragtag warband cobbled together out of local malcontents. It is an army of which Iam in command. If you can't be trusted to follow instructions, or to be where I need you to be when I-"

"Oh, do spare me your trite disciplinary," the doppelganger said impatiently, placing her hands on her hips and fixing Demosthenes with a derisive glare. Even though she was almost a half head shorter than the taller Spartan, she still managed to make it seem as if she were looking down at him. "I am exactly where _I_ need to be. Learn to live with it." She shrugged. "Or don't. It makes very little difference to me."

"And what about my men!?" Demosthenes snapped harshly, his surface calm vanishing in an instant. "They needed you here when Sentos was ambushing them! You claim it's in your interests to help us, and yet so far you've done nothing except level a couple of villages that couldn't have defended themselves even if they had wanted to!" He pointed up the hill in an accusing manner. "Those scum you call soldiers are from these lands! They know this country better than my scouts! They could cover double the territory in half the time and not fall into Sentos' traps doing it, yet still you let me send my men to their deaths over and over-"

"And over again?" the doppelganger sighed cutting him short. She glanced at Mortius. "Don't you get a little tired of hearing him witter on about his 'men' all the time?"

Mortius did not reply, but that did not deter the doppelganger. Instead she turned her attention back to Demosthenes.

"Well, you can all rest easy now. For once, I'm the bringer of good news."

Demosthenes lip peeled up, revealing his teeth.

"I highly doubt that," he seethed.

"Now, now," the doppelganger admonished him with a wag of her finger. "There's no need to go getting nasty. Besides, I thought you'd be happy. I'm here to help after all." She looked at the row of bodies one more time. "For once our needs are mutual and we both stand to gain from what happens next. The time has come for me to step off the sidelines. I've sent one little message to my alter ego already, but it's past time I sent another one. A stronger one, and this Sentos will spell it out quite nicely I think."

Demosthenes frowned at her.

"Are you saying-"

"That Sentos is my problem now?" The doppelganger gave a predatory smile. "Absolutely."

* * *

The morning sun was surprisingly warm given the time of year. The ocean surf was not however, and Callisto had been standing in it barefoot long enough that her toes were beginning to go numb. It still did not affect her concentration. She was standing a little out from the shoreline, legs parted to brace against the incoming waves, the water washing up to the mid point of her thighs as she held a long, straight piece of driftwood with a tip whittled down to a sharp point mere inches from the water's surface.

Her eyes were fixed on a point just beyond the spear tip. Staring past the surface of the waves, they flicked back and forth through the murky depths, hunting deliberately for any sign of movement. Suddenly something skittered in the shifting sands, and without hesitation she lashed out with her makeshift spear. It found its mark, but rebounded off a thickened crustacean shell, and whatever it was she had tried to impale darted safely away.

Cursing under her breath, she shifted her balance and went back to waiting. Her father had taught her how to fish like this in the brooks back home. The waters there had been clearer and the fish easier to spot as a result, but the basic principles remained the same. She felt a dull ache in her throat at the hazy memory drifting in the back of her mind. At that moment, she would have given anything to have her father beside her, telling her how to hold the stick, or the best way to move so that she would not disturb the fish. The pleasant memory lasted only a moment, and then it was gone, quickly replaced by the vision of Cirra in flames. The old familiar anger stirred in her gut, like a snake coiling back to strike. She did her best to hold it, to wrestle it under submission and try to find the peaceful centre Ithius kept talking about, but the best she could manage was to grit her teeth and clench the stick so hard that she could feel it creaking beneath her fingers.

At the edge of her sight, she caught another flicker of movement and pivoted at the waist to face it. In the same movement, she stabbed out with her makeshift spear. She felt it meet resistance, then push past it, only to then have it buck in her hands as whatever it was she had just impaled struggled desperately to be free. With a triumphant 'ha!', she put more pressure on the spear, making sure that whatever she had just caught was secure before hefting it out of the water. The fish she had caught was big, a bottom feeder of some kind with a rounded back and flat belly. Tilting her head, she watched as the last drops of life drained out of the creature until it fell still, then, without ceremony, she pulled the catch from the tip of her spear and tucked it beneath her arm before turning to start back toward shore.

As she turned, she caught sight of Athelis, watching from just beyond the tidal line. He was carrying a bunch of driftwood, clearly intending to relight campfire from the previous night.

"Morning," he said with a nod as she came splashing out of the surf.

"Here," Callisto replied, tossing her catch to him and causing him to drop the driftwood he was carrying.

"Breakfast?" Athelis grunted at the weight of the thing.

"Yep," Callisto said shortly, walking over to where she had discarded her boots before stepping into the ocean. "Fishing's hardly my area of expertise, but I think I managed quite well, don't you?"

She did not give him time to answer, instead tugging her boots on sharply, and stalking off down the beach and back toward the cave. Try as she might, the memories of Cirra were not so easily pushed aside, even after all these years, and she really was not in the mood for chit chat. Behind her, Athelis grabbed up the driftwood again, then jogged to catch up.

"You weren't there when I woke up this morning," he said.

"Observant of you," Callisto said without looking at him. She had indeed risen first, leaving Athelis snoring by the sizzling embers of the fire while she had determined to go out and source some food.

"I was worried about you."

Callisto frowned at him.

"Why?"

"I..." Athelis began then trailed off as if he was not sure what he really wanted to say. "I thought you might be in trouble," he said finally.

"I can take care of myself, Athelis. I don't need a babysitter."

"But isn't that why you wanted me along in the first place? To watch your back?"

Callisto drew up sharply and rounded on him.

"Okay," she snapped. "Let's get one thing straight here. I _didn't_ want you along. You pretty much begged to come with me and I deigned to allow it. Now, considering that fact, I think it's time we laid some ground rules, wouldn't you agree?"

Athelis eyed her steadily, but she could tell she had gotten under his skin.

"What did you have in mind?" he said eventually.

"Let's stick to no small talk for now. I'll let you know the rest as and when I come up with them."

With that she turned and started on her way again.

"So what's the plan then?" Athelis called after her as he jogged to catch up. Callisto rolled her eyes.

"What did I just say?" she said, rounding on him again as she did so.

Athelis raised his arms in a gesture of submission, or at least as good a gesture of submission as he could manage with them full of wood and fish.

"Hey," he protested, "you said no small talk. I hardly think wanting to know what our next move is the same 'so what about this weather we're having huh'."

Callisto ground her teeth together in frustration. She was beginning to understand why Adrasteia and her brother had such a strained relationship. The man could be almost insufferable at times.

"For now, we sit tight," she said. "Ithius will send word when its safe for us to head on over to Delphi, but until then-" She stopped suddenly her ears pricking up as the wind changed, carrying with it faint traces of a sound she had not detected earlier.

"What's the matter?" Athelis asked, a confused expression on his face.

"Shhhhh!" Callisto hissed at him, tilting her head as she listened so she might better catch the sound. When she looked back at Athelis again he was still staring at her, clearly not understanding. "You can't hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"Drums," Callisto said, listening all the more carefully. "Drums and chanting."

"From where?"

"Just listen!"

In front of her, Athelis' frown deepened as he listened more intently. At this distance, it was difficult to pick the drums out from the wash of the ocean and the rush of coastal wind, but once you had them, it became all but impossible _not_ tohear them.

"Can you hear it now?" she asked and Athelis gave a nod.

"It's coming from up there." he said, and pointed toward the tree covered clifftop high above the cave they had been hiding out in.

Callisto squinted, doing her best to make out whatever it was that might be atop the cliff. She could not see anything. Whoever was up there, the trees were doing a very good job of hiding them from view.

"You said you know this area," she said to Athelis, all trace of her earlier irritation with him evaporating. "Is there someplace special on that clifftop?"

"Not really," the ex-mercenary said. "I mean, there's an old temple to Zeus somewhere I think, but it's been abandoned for years. The cult of Zeus moved to the city when I was a boy and no one's had any use for it since then."

"Well it sounds like someone's found a use for it now," Callisto said, and she flashed him a grin. "Want to check it out?"

Athelis' eyed the fish he was carrying sadly and his stomach gave a rumble of complaint.

"I guess that means we're skipping breakfast then?"

* * *

The trek up the hillside to the clifftop was relatively uneventful, if a little wearing. The lower slopes were a easier, being relatively gentle and covered only in long grasses that came up Callisto's knees. As they progressed higher however, the slopes became steeper and more treacherous, with occasional jutting rock faces blocking the path that they either had to work their way around, or failing that, scale directly.

"Didn't you say that cave of yours had a tunnel that led straight to the cliff top?" Athelis breathed heavily after the third such climb.

"I did," Callisto said, not looking back at him as her eyes surveyed the trail ahead. Trail was perhaps too strong a word. It was more a narrow line trodden through the grass by many people over the years, that only now was nature beginning to reclaim.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just have short cut through there then?" Athelis said.

"Most definitely," Callisto replied absently. Her mind was only half on the conversation. Instead she was studying the trail that led up the hillside. Some of the blades of grass along it were bent and broken, and a thin branch on a lone birch tree that the path ran past had been snapped off. Judging by how fresh the damage looked, it would seem that someone had been this way recently. Perhaps as little as a half day ago. "But then we'd be blazing a trail," she continued, "and what good's a bolt hole if people can follow that same trail back to it?"

Athelis gave a tired sigh.

"That's fair enough I suppose."

Callisto started forward again, hiking along the path and up the hillside, lost in thought. In truth, the little expedition was something of a relief, allowing her to dwell on things other than her dead family. Still, there was a nagging feeling at the back of her mind. All was not right here. She could feel it in her gut, and the closer they got to the drumming and the chanting, the more persistent the nagging became.

"How long did you say this temple had been abandoned again?" she asked as they approached the clifftop and the ground beneath them began to level out.

"Can't be less than twenty years I'd say," Athelis replied. The number of trees around them was increasing, and the rocky, grassy ground had begun to give way to thicker underbrush as the clifftop flattened out. In the distance the drumming had become louder, and the chanting had risen to match it. Whatever was going on up ahead, it was clearly heading toward a climax.

"And there's no reason you can think of why Zeus' people would return now?"

"None," Athelis said from with a firm shake of his head. "I mean sometimes travellers use it as shelter, but its not that common. It's too far out of the way for one."

Callisto frowned. She had a sneaking suspicion that she knew exactly who they were going to find at the temple, but before she could voice it, the drums and chanting reached a crescendo of frenzied excitement, only to then cut its self abruptly short.

The sudden silence was almost deafening to Callisto. Both she and Athelis stopped in their tracks, listening intently to see if the drums would start up again. For a minute or so, nothing happened, then slowly, somewhere deep beneath their feet there came the familiar rumble of the earth itself shifting and contorting. As the deep rumble grew louder, the ground around them began to shake, and Callisto widened her stance to better balance herself. Athelis, not as well prepared, stumbled slightly in surprise and was forced to brace himself against a nearby tree trunk. The quake itself was relatively small, but it was enough to set the trees swaying from side to side, leaves rustling as the various birds nesting in them took flight in a wave of feathers and alarmed squawking.

"What do you suppose just happened?" Athelis said, a hint of tremulousness to his voice as the rumbling died and the shaking began to subside.

"Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea." Callisto was staring intently into the trees as if she would somehow be able to see straight through them to whatever was taking place beyond. Slowly, she drew her sword, the steel rasping softly as it cleared the sheath across her back. "I want to make absolutely sure I'm right though. You still game?"

Athelis took a deep breath and drew his own sword from where it hung at his hip, along with the notched sword breaking dagger he kept on the other side.

"Let's just try and be cautious, okay?"

Callisto smiled at him.

"Athelis sweety, caution is my middle name."

The former mercenary gave her an exasperated look and then, carefully, the two of them began to pick their way forward through the trees, hunching low and flitting through the brush as silently as they could manage. Not a sound could be heard from up ahead now, and Callisto was no longer sure which was more chilling; the relentless chanting, or the sudden eerie silence. All that could be heard was the wind among the branches overhead, and the distant wash of waves below.

Before too long the trees had begun to thin out and Callisto caught her first glimpse of the temple. It was a simple affair, unusual for a temple to Zeus which were normally far grander affairs much more befitting of their patron's status as the King of Olympus. Then again, this was Delphi, and Zeus' cult was less dominant around these parts. Still, Callisto had expected something with a little more flair.

Left to rot for twenty odd years, the weathering of countless storms and ocean winds had been hard on the building. Its walls were mottled and dull, overgrown with creepers and lichen, while at its top, the temple's one claim to ornamentation – a single stone dome – had seen much better days. Originally painted gold, much of that original paint had been lost, exposing the bare stone beneath, and even that had given way in one corner of the dome, leaving only a raw and gaping hole.

Despite the state of disrepair the temple found itself in, there were signs of recent habitation. A couple of camp fires were arrayed around the front of the temple, and a couple of sacks of supplies had been piled against a nearby wall. There were other signs of life too. The doors and roof had had some basic repairs done to them, the roof being patched with waxed cloth to keep out the worst of the rains, and a few rotted timbers in the doors having been broken off and replaced with rough but serviceable replacements. A wider track than the one Callisto and Athelis had followed up here also showed signs of having been recently cleared, with stacks of tree branches and other foliage that had been cut back to widen it lying in neat piles just off the thoroughfare.

And finally there was the body.

Callisto and Athelis did not spot it immediately. They had exited the trees from behind the temple and circled around it warily, weapons at the ready for any potential surprise attacks that might be launched at them. It was only when they rounded the building proper and took in the main front doors that they caught sight of the corpse. It was lying on its side, clad in red robes that were decorated in strange patterns and that included a familiar looking sickle motif.

"Followers," Callisto heard Athelis mutter.

"Looks like," she nodded, kneeling at the tree line.

"You think there are more of them?"

Callisto just shrugged.

"Maybe," she said, then she straightened and began to move forward across the open ground that separated the trees from the temple and the body. "But we're not going to find out skulking around in the bushes. You wait here and keep watch. I'm going to take a closer look."

Athelis said nothing, and instead just nodded, his face set in a grim mask that belied little to no emotion. Callisto knew he must be seething inside though. After all, these people, and particularly their leader, Pelion, were the whole reason he was here with her in the first place. Or at least, that was what he was probably telling himself.

Brushing those thoughts aside, she moved at a half run, half crab-like scuttle over to where the body lay. Once she had reached it, she dropped to one knee and scanned the area for any other Followers that might be lurking about. There was nothing. Even the breeze rustling the trees seemed to have died off, leaving only stillness in its wake.

Cautiously, she turned her attention to the body beside her. It was a man, or more accurately a boy, barely twenty at her guess, and perhaps even younger. His face bore a death mask of panicked desperation, eyes wide and staring. His lips were stained a dark crimson and the tip of his tongue was sticking out from between them, strangely purple and swollen.

Frowning, Callisto reached out and placed her hand against the boy's throat to feel for a pulse. As she expected there was none, but the body was still warm to the touch. His death had been recent; again, no surprise after the drumming and chanting they had been hearing on the way here.

"So where are the rest of you?" she whispered softly to herself glancing back over her shoulder toward the temple doors. They were ajar enough for a person to have exited the building, and the tracks the boy had left in the dirt showed he had been running at first, but that he had not gone far before he had begun to falter, eventually falling to his knees and crawling, then finally dragging himself to where he now lay.

"There're scratch marks on his throat."

Callisto craned her neck around to see Athelis standing close by.

"I thought I told you to keep watch."

"Coast's clear," Athelis said, not taking his eyes off the body. "What do you suppose did that to him?" He nodded at the scratch marks.

Callisto turned her attention back to the corpse.

"There's blood on his fingers," she said. "I'd say he did it to himself. Those marks aren't enough to have killed him though." She reached over and twisted the boys head so that she could get better purchase, and tried to open his mouth. To her surprise, the boys jaw was clamped tightly shut, and she could barely get it open more than a sliver.

Sighing, she reached down to her hip, producing a small dagger from the sheath she had there and slipping it into the gap between the boy's teeth. Then, with a vicious twist, she levered his jaws apart with a sickening crack. Nearby, Athelis winced.

"No need to be squeamish," Callisto said not really paying much attention to him. "The boy's dead after all. It's not like he can feel this."

Athelis shot her a disbelieving look, but Callisto ignored him, more intrigued by what she was discovering. With the corpse's jaw broken, it was easier to pry his teeth apart, and immediately she could see why opening the mouth had proved so difficult in the first place. It was not just the tongue that was swollen, but the walls of the mouth and throat, and all the muscles beneath too. So severe was the swelling that it had ended up closing off the boys airways.

"Suffocated," she said, settling back on her haunches. "Poison most likely."

Athelis frowned.

"Why would someone poison him?"

Callisto straightened from the body and turned to stare at the half open door to the temple.

"I think I might know," she said, then slapped Athelis hard on the back. "Come on. Let's check it out."

Not waiting to see if he was even following her, she started toward the temple. Passing through the doors she found herself in a gloomy antechamber that led to a second set of doors. The inner doors were also ajar and as she started toward them she felt her foot strike against something, sending it skittering across the cracked floor tiles to rebound off the opposite wall. Stooping, she picked up the offending object as it rolled back toward her. It was a simple mug, stained inside the same grape-like shade as the colour of the boy outside's lips. Fingering the residue, she tasted it on the tip of her tongue before spitting to clear it away. It was wine, but there was an extra bitterness to it. Poison, without a doubt.

"Guess that answers how he was poisoned," she said, handing the mug to Athelis.

"Someone spiked the wine?"

Callisto nodded and crossed to the inner doors, pushing them wide.

"And it looks like he wasn't the only one who drank it," she said.

The main altar chamber beyond the doors was filled with bodies. There must have been a hundred, or maybe even more, all dressed in the same crimson robes as the boy outside.

"Do you think they all died the same way as the one outside?" Athelis said as he stepped up behind her.

Callisto stepped into the room and stooped at the first body she came across, tilting the head so that she could get a better look. The signs of poison were on this one too and like the boy outside, the body was still warm.

"I'd say so," she said, straightening and beginning to pick her way across the room while Athelis followed behind her.

"I don't get it," he said, shaking his head as they reached the main temple altar. "Why would they all kill themselves like this?" He prodded the body of what he assumed to be the head of the sect. The man had a beatific expression on his face, almost a look of rapture even, as if he had been his final moments choking and spluttering for precious oxygen was how he had wanted his life to end. "Do you think they knew what they were doing?"

Callisto turned and took in the room.

"Some of them didn't," she said. "Or at the very least they had second thoughts. The boy outside was panicked when he died, and there's a few in here who look the same. The rest though..." she motioned to the big drums they had heard earlier. Nearly everyone had its player slumped across it. "They died where they were standing. They knew what they were doing. My guess is that this was some kind of ritual."

"But why?" Athelis said again. "Why would they do _this_?" He nudged the body again. "I don't understand it at all."

Callisto did not reply at first. She was still trying to puzzle that out herself. Why kill themselves when they were sheltered up here on the clifftop, far away from civilisation. What could they possibly have to gain by-

When it came, the answer hit her like a charging centaur.

"It was the earthquake!" she said, turning to him. "That's why they did it!"

"Huh?" Athelis replied, clearly not understanding what she was driving at.

"It's Cronus," Callisto explained. "Deaths put pressure on the barrier, remember? The more that happen at once, the more that pressure builds, and we get the earthquakes as he struggles to get free. This was an offering, a way to put more stress on the barrier to help their master be free."

"But in Sparta it took thousands dying to cause the quakes," Athelis said, clearly remembering the quake he and Callisto had felt when, several miles distant from them, Demosthenes had enacted his purge of the Helot population. "There's barely even a hundred people here."

"That was weeks ago," Callisto argued. "And there's been quite a bit more death since then. The barrier must be getting weaker, which means we're running out of time and we can't waste any more of it standing here." She turned and started for the exit. "I just hope Ithius has pleaded my case well because we're going to-"

She stopped short as she reached the doors. At the edge of hearing something had just broken the eerie silence that had settled over the temple. Still standing by the altar, Athelis had clearly heard it too.

"Is that..." he began.

"Horses," Callisto nodded. Already the thunder of hooves churning dirt had grown louder. "And lots of them. Headed this way and fast."

"Who do you think they are?"

Callisto started forward again, this time at a jog.

"I don't know," she called back at him. "But considering the fact that we're surrounded by dead bodies, and I don't exactly have the most savoury reputation around these parts, I think it might be best if we made ourselves scarce before they get here, don't you?"

Athelis did not answer, but she knew he had already broken into a run behind her. In mere moments the two of them were out of the temple and sprinting for the tree line, not even pausing to look at the horses pounding up the trail toward them. Nevertheless, before they could reach the cover of the woods, they could already hear angry shouts coming up from behind them.

"Looks like they're onto us!" Athelis yelled.

"Really?" Callisto shouted back sarcastically. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

Seconds later they were out of the clearing and plunging head long through the woods. Callisto had hoped the trees would offer them some cover, but the vegetation at this opposite side of the clearing was too sparse, and it barely even gave their pursuers and their horses pause before they were riding in after them. She did her best to throw them off, weaving back and forth between obstacles, aiming for particularly thick patches of underbrush and spots where the trees were clustered more tightly but none of it did any good. The riders behind them were just too close, and the cover was too little and too far apart.

"They're gaining!" she heard Athelis wheezing behind her. Even if she could throw them off, she knew in that instant that he could not. His breath was ragged in his chest and, risking a glance back, she could see that his strides were already faltering.

Desperately, she turned her attention to the woods ahead, hoping against hope to find something that might help them. Not too far away she spotted it exactly what she needed; a rocky outcrop right in front of a birch tree with some unusually low growing branches.

"Keep going!" she shouted to Athelis. "I'm going to try and cause a distraction!"

"Wait!" he began, but before he could protest further she had angled off toward the rocks. The shifting tempo of the hoof beats behind her told her that at least some of the riders had changed direction to match hers, although exactly how many was unclear. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Athelis putting on a final burst of speed, but already she could see her ploy had failed. There were enough riders in pursuit that they had simply split their force, and at least ten or more mounted men were still in pursuit of him. She cursed under her breath, but did not alter her plan. She was committed now, and there was no time to change it.

Reaching the rocky outcrop, she hopped up onto it in a single stride that did not break the smooth flow of her sprint, and continued on up it, leaping as she reached its highest point to grab one of the low hanging branches. Wrapping her fingers tightly around it and hoping it would hold, she kicked with her legs to aid her momentum, swinging up with her arms taking her weight as she reached the apex of her swing where she held herself inverted above the branch, feet pointing skyward and head toward the ground. She held that position less than an instant, quickly releasing her grip with one hand and pivoting at the wrist so that she was facing the opposite direction before seizing back hold of the branch once more. Then, as gravity began to reassert itself, she bent her legs so that her own weight carried her back the way she had come. On the downward swing, she caught the briefest glimpse of her nearest pursuer's alarmed expression as he saw her coming at him. Then her boots were hammering into his chest, carrying him backward out of his horse's saddle and sending him sailing through the air for several feet before he eventually came crashing to the ground with a loud clatter of leather and steel.

Callisto let go of the branch, her body arcing back upward into the air once more. Tucking her knees, she turned her ungainly fall into a graceful backward somersault that landed her perfectly astride the fallen rider. Ripping the dagger she carried from the sheath at her hip, she sat herself on the man's chest, pressing her knees down on his arms and pushing the blade tip up sharply under his jaw.

Even as she did so, she heard the rumble of hooves announcing the arrival of more riders. Twisting her neck, she took stock of what exactly it was she had bearing down on her. There were about fifteen of them she noted, all dressed in the same dark leather armour. Now she could get a better good look at them, she immediately recognised the armour as the uniform of the Delphi city guard. At a shouted order from someone at their rear, the riders dismounted hurriedly, drawing their swords and fanning out to surround her as they went. As soon as they were all in position, several of the soldiers began to advance on her.

"Ah, ah, ah!" she said in a sing song manner. "One more step from you boys, and your handsome young friend here is going to have to learn to breathe through a hole in his chin." She pressed the blade a little harder against her still dazed prisoner's jaw to demonstrate, and the man gave a soft whimper as a thin rivulet of blood began to run freely down the blade.

"You'd do it too, wouldn't you," someone said to the rear of the band. It was the same voice that had been barking orders mere moments ago. Several of the soldiers parted to allow another of their number, dressed in armour only a little more ornate than his comrades, to pass them. "Stand easy men and watch yourselves. This is Callisto you're dealing with. She'd kill any one of you without so much as a second thought."

"Well, well," Callisto said, recognising the man almost immediately. "If it isn't captain..." she paused and cocked her head slightly. "I'm sorry. I seem to have forgotten your name. That happens sometimes when people fail to make an impression."

The man's already sour face seemed to darken even more at the insult, and Callisto checked a box on her mental scorecard. Point one to her. She did actually remember the man's name of course. He was Barabus, Delphi's captain of the guard. It was kind of hard to forget the man that had been in overall command of the dungeon she had spent six months trapped in without so much as even a hint of a trial.

"I'm sure you'll recall soon enough," Barabus said. "Now let my man go, or I and the rest my men will make sure you never leave these woods alive."

"And if I oblige, what then?" Callisto said, keeping the dagger pressed hard against her hostage's chin. "You'll let me go?"

Barabus smiled darkly.

"Hardly," he said. "You'll still die. You'll just get to do it officially, at the end of a hangman's rope like what should have happened years ago."

Callisto adopted a mock expression of consideration, as if she were actually pondering the ultimatum.

"Tempting offer," she said finally. "But I think I'm going to have to decline. I've never been one to go in for all the pomp and ceremony of a formal execution."

"And what about your friend?" Barabus said, his tone suddenly icy and hard.

It was then Callisto noticed foot steps coming from nearby, and she felt her stomach turn as she saw Athelis being led out of the trees, his hands bound behind him at the wrists while three soldiers held him at sword point.

"Captain, captain, captain," she admonished, shaking her head as she turned her attention back to Barabus. "It appears you've been misinformed. I thought you knew that I don't have any friends."

"Really?" Barabus said tilting his head slightly. "So I don't suppose it will bother you if we kill this one here and now then, will it?"

"Go right ahead," Callisto bluffed. "If I wasn't busy with your little minion here I'd spare you the trouble and do it myself."

"Very considerate of you." Barabus nodded to the three men holding Athelis, and a moment later the former mercenary was on his knees in the dirt, a sword being leveled against his neck. Nearby, several of the Delphian soldiers shifted uneasily, clearly less than comfortable with their commander's tactics.

"Now wait a minute," Athelis said, suddenly sounding nervous. "You don't understand! I'm no bandit! I'm a citizen of Delphi-"

"Who has been caught associating with a known enemy of the city," Barabus cut him off smoothly. "And when that enemy is someone like Callisto, I doubt many questions will be asked when we present your head to the Temple Elders, especially if we present it nicely alongside hers." He nodded to the soldier holding a sword at Athelis' neck. The man returned the nod and drew his blade back to prepare for a killing strike.

Athelis looked desperately at Callisto.

"You're not really going to let them do this are you?" he said.

Callisto gave him an apologetic shrug. It would not do to drop the bluff now, although she was beginning to wonder how much further she would have to carry it.

"But my sister-" Athelis tried to protest again only to be cut short by Barabus once more.

"Is a handmaiden to the Oracle," the Delphian captian said. "Don't think I didn't recognise you boy. You're Adrasteia's brother. Quite the coincidence, don't you think, that the day after she returns to the city, you should show your face again as well, especially after all those years away. Is there something more to all this? Are she and that Helot with her in league with the Spartans like you and your mistress here?"

Athelis frowned in confusion. Callisto felt the same but managed to hold her composure a little better. What was Barabus talking about?

"Spartans?" Athelis said. "We're not in league with the Spartans! We're not in league with anyone!"

"You expect me to believe that?" Barabus hissed, his voice suddenly low and boiling with fury. "After all that she's done? After all that she's still doing even now?"

"Wait, what?" Callisto interjected. "What do you mean 'still doing'?"

"Don't play dumb with me," Barabus snarled at her. "You've been seen burning villages to the south with a Spartan army at your back. Don't even try to deny it! Now I'm done playing this game with the pair of you. One last chance Callisto. Release my man there, or will have my men cut you both down where you stand. You have until the count of three. One..."

"Callisto..." Athelis said, his voice sudden;y shot through with fear.

Callisto felt her stomach churning while her mind raced at what she had just been told. How was what Barabus was saying even possible? Destroying villages? With the Spartans? Her? It could not be true, surely?

"Two..."

"Callisto, I don't think he's playing around!"

"Thr-"

She gave a furious snarl of frustration.

"Alright!" she snapped, straightening at the same time and tossing her dagger aside. "Alright, you win. I surrender."

Barabus almost looked disappointed.

"I honestly never thought it would be that easy," he said. Beneath Callisto, the young man she had been squatting over scrambled clear of her as quickly as he could manage. "Now drop your weapons."

Callisto grudgingly obliged, unbuckling the sword that hung across her back and turning in a slow circle with it so that everyone could see she was not otherwise armed before tossing the weapon aside.

"So what now?" she asked.

"The same as the last time we apprehended you," Barabus replied, gesturing to several of his men, who quickly hurried forward with lengths of rope to bind her hands and wrists.

" _Xena_ caught me," Callisto replied archly, then without warning she turned and hissed at the men approaching her. They all stopped dead in their tracks and Callisto flashed them an innocent smile before turning back to Barabus again. "You and your men just cleaned up the mess afterwards."

"And we were sure to thank the Warrior Princess for her help," Barabus said, causing Callisto to give a slight grimace. She hated it when peopled called Xena the Warrior Princess. Barabus, for his part, seemed satisfied by her obvious annoyance. "You'll return with us to the city," he continued. "There I'll personally see to it that you're thrown in the deepest dungeon we have and left to rot until such time as we are ready to have you tried and executed."

"I do so love a fair trial," Callisto said as the Delphian soldiers began to approach her once more, this time with decidedly more caution. Obligingly, she pressed her ankles together and held out her wrists so that they would be more easily able to bind her.

Before Barabus could reply, a cry sounded from nearby, followed by the pounding of hooves as single horseman came galloping out of the trees, pulling his mount up suddenly at the sight before him.

"Captain!" the man announced excitedly. Barabus shot him a dark glance, apparently annoyed by the interruption.

"What is it Therus?" he snapped.

"It's the temple sir! You ordered us to check on the people there..."

"They _are_ the reason we were sent out here in the first place aren't they? Well, spit it out! How are they?"

"Dead sir," the soldier said.

"Dead?" Barabus shot Callisto a dark look. "All of them?"

Therus nodded.

"All of them sir."

The soldier binding Callisto's wrists was finally finishing his work, but before he could step away, she gave him a coy look.

"You want to do that knot a little tighter?" she suggested. "I can still feel the blood flow to my fingers." As if to prove her point she wiggled them playfully at him. The man glanced up at her in irritation, then pulled the knot so tight that it bit uncomfortably into her arms, even with the leather arm guards she was wearing.

Callisto flashed the man one of her toothy smiles.

"There," she said. "Now doesn't that make you feel safer?"

The man grunted and stepped back so that Barabus could stalk up to her.

"The Followers at the temple," he snarled accusingly. "Last I heard there were close to a hundred of them living out here. What were they to you, eh? Just more notches to add to you belt? I'd have thought you'd be out of space by now."

"You think _I_ killed them?" she said, and gave a long suffering sigh. "How did I just _know_ you were going to pin this one on me too?"

"Are you saying you didn't kill them?"

Callisto cocked her head, studying the other man intently.

"I would," she said carefully. "but then I don't think you'd believe me."

"And you'd be right," Barabus snorted in disgust before turning and stalking back toward his waiting horse. "Bring them," he commanded. "It's high time Delphi had its justice."

Before too long had passed, the rest of the soldiers had formed up into a marching column. Most were mounted but a few remained afoot so as to more closely guard and escort their prisoners. Slowly, the column began its long march back to the city.

"So," Callisto grinned at Athelis as she fell into step beside him. "Are you glad you came along?"

* * *

AUTHORS NOTE: Apologies for the long delay in getting this chapter out into the wild. It's been a crazy month at work what with the end of the financial year, and I just haven't had the time to devote to it as much as I'd like, hence the long gap between updates. These stories have been going for so long now that I want to make sure I get them right and that they're not rushed. Hopefully this will be reflected in the quality of the final piece, but it does mean it may take me a while to get to that finale. Anyway, if you can bear with me, I promise to try my best to make this all worth the wait... maybe.

EDIT: Some minor changes to dialogue and prose to help the readability of the chapter. Also a lot of typos hopefully corrected.


	7. Chapter Six: Digging Deeper

**Chapter Six: Digging Deeper**

To Adrasteia, the temple's standard breakfast of fish, freshly delivered from the coast each morning, alongside bread still warm from the baker's oven and piping hot broth, had never before looked so appetizing. In the past it had always seemed dull to her, just another example of the rigid routine of daily life within the Temple of Apollo. That, of course, was entirely before she had set out for Sparta. Compared to the barest amounts of food she had endured on the road, and even on Drevus' ship, this was a veritable feast.

The aroma of fresh bread filled her nostrils, and she breathed deep. She wanted to make this moment last, to savour it in a way she had never done before. Her stomach had other ideas however. It let out a load growl of complaint, and she could wait no longer. Reaching down, she grabbed the bread hungrily up from the platter in front of her, and tore into it with great relish. The dough was thick with a light crunch to it, and the outer crust was as brittle as sliver thin glass. She chewed for a moment with a contented sigh before ripping off another chunk between her teeth. Her stomach murmured contentedly at her as she reached for the pitcher of chilled water to wash it down. She continued that way for a while longer, steadily working her way through the meal until, all of a sudden, she paused, a fork with a piece of fish dripping with its own oil half way to her lips.

Two weeks.

The thought came to her unbidden, but it was strong enough to make her stop her feasting. Had it really been so little time? Only a fortnight, if that, since she had left Delphi and headed south in the company of Themistocles and Nikias? Only a week since Nikias had...

She sniffed and dropped the fork to her plate, her appetite vanishing in an instant.

"Not hungry?"

She turned to see Themistocles approaching her from behind, a single bowl of broth held in his hand. His thick braids had been pulled back by a single copper clasp and all trace of his usual finery was gone, replaced by much simpler, more utilitarian gear.

"Not anymore," she said, pushing the plate of fish to one side.

"Bad thoughts?"

"The worst."

Themistocles nodded as he slid into the seat opposite her.

"I can understand that," he said, brandishing a wooden spoon at her as he spoke. "Still, you should finish what you start when the opportunity arises. Take it from a man who's lived through more than a couple of battles in his time. Who knows when you will get the chance to do so again."

With that he began to lay into his broth hungrily.

Adrasteia looked grudgingly at her food, then, with a sigh, she took up her fork and began to eat again.

"I guess you're right," she said, chewing on the fish. "Tell me though, do you ever plan to stop trying to teach me life lessons?"

Themistocles smiled at her.

"That sick of me are you?"

Adrasteia shook her head.

"Just wishing we could have a normal conversation for once is all."

"And if our relationship to one another were even remotely founded on normalcy, maybe we could."

Adrasteia nodded ruefully.

"Right again it seems," she said, shooting him a half-hearted smile as she did so. "Well, if shop talk it must be, then shop talk it is." She leaned forward over the table conspiratorially. "What do you think's going on? With Callisto I mean. That village that woman said she destroyed. She couldn't have done it, right? She's been with us the entire time."

Themistocles' expression darkened.

"I don't know," he said, and Adrasteia felt her stomach turn.

"If you don't have an answer, then this _must_ be serious," she quipped.

"And worrying," Themistocles replied. "I honestly didn't expect this as a development, and it threatens our plans for moving forward." He let out a long weary exhale, and his shoulders slumped. "Then again, I suppose what with your visions and all this talk of cults, gods and Titans that we should be better preparing ourselves for the unexpected."

"My visions," Adrasteia muttered quietly, almost to herself, before looking up at Themistocles again. "What if Ithius is right? What if his whole crazy story about Cronus trying to break free is true? That might explain why whichever god it was that sent them to me did it in the first place, right? As a warning against what was coming?"

"Possibly," Themistocles nodded. Then he fell silent, his spoon resting on the rim of his bowl while his gaze fixed somewhere just behind her. "Well, well. Speak Hades' name and he shall appear."

Adrasteia frowned then twisted to see that Ithius himself had just entered the room, a plate of fish and bread in his hand. He glanced at the two of them watching him, then turned and proceeded to make his way over to a table located off to one side of the dining hall to eat in private.

"From the looks of him, I'd say his discussion with the Oracle to try and grant Callisto clemency and entry to the city didn't go so well." Themistocles said behind her.

Adrasteia shook her head at him.

"We haven't spoken to her yet," she said, glancing back at him and shrugging as she did so. "The timing didn't seem right."

Themistocles rubbed at his chin.

"So she's still out there then, and all alone too," he said thoughtfully.

"Not all alone," Adrasteia replied. "My brother's with her." Suddenly it dawned on her exactly what it was that Themistocles might be driving at. "Wait... you don't think that she..."

"Sneaked off to indulge herself in a little wanton murder and pillage?" Themistocles shrugged. "I doubt it, but there's always the possibility. Even if she had, it still wouldn't explain the old woman's story. The time lines don't match."

Adrasteia wanted to breathe a sigh of relief at that, but for some reason she couldn't. Her feelings about Callisto and her brother were tangled in knots, and she had no idea precisely how she was supposed to untangle them.

"I hope Athelis is okay," she said.

"He'll be fine," Themistocles said. "He's a survivor. It takes a lot to kill someone like that. Just ask Callisto."

Adrasteia gave a half amused snort, and lifted her fingers to pinch the bridge of her nose. She could feel a headache coming on. There was just so much to try and make sense of.

"Gods, when did things get so complicated," she muttered.

"They always have been," Themistocles said evenly. "You're just starting to take notice for the first time."

Adrasteia over at Ithius again. He was seated quietly by himself, chewing at a hunk of bread.

"Maybe we should talk to him?" she said. "Find out how he knows so much about what's going on. I guarantee you he has more answers than he's told us."

"I agree," Themistocles replied with an emphatic nod and small smile. "Maybe _you_ should."

Adrasteia nodded.

"Okay then, so we talk to him. But how do we... wait a minute... what did you just say? _'I_ should talk to him? What about you? _"_ She turned back to face him, just in time to see one of the temple servants approaching Themistocles from behind.

"Archon Themistocles?" the man said, his voice only slightly tremulous.

"Yes?" Themistocles said, never taking his steady gaze from Adrasteia.

"The horse you requested is ready my lord. The stables have it saddled and waiting for you."

"Thank you. Tell them I'll be along shortly. And have my travel bags brought down from my room. I'll be needing them." He gave a small wave of dismissal, and the servant dropped a respectful bow before turning and scurrying off.

"What is this!?" Adrasteia demanded hotly. "You're leaving!?"

"Yes."

"But now!? Right when we need you the most!?"

"Yes."

Adrasteia felt her teeth gritting together.

"And you didn't want to tell me that first?" she said, trying to hold on to her anger. "No 'sorry, but I've got to go'. Not even a 'hey thanks for all your help, but I got what I needed and now it's time for me to fly away home and leave the rest of you to twist in the wind'?"

"That's not-" Themistocles began, but she was not about to let him interrupt her.

"I guess I shouldn't really be surprised," she continued "I mean, its not like you owe us anything. Nikias only died helping us – you even – escape, but what does that matter? He was just another peon offered up for the glory of Athens, right?"

"I don't-"

"I trusted you!" she snapped a little too sharply drawing looks from other tables in the room, but she was long past caring.

"Adrasteia-"

"I need you!" she said, her voice a little lower this time as she felt her anger beginning to fade, only to be replaced by a deep sense of loss and betrayal. "Nikias is gone, and I thought you'd be here, and I don't think I can do this on my own."

Themistocles regarded her for a moment, then he pushed his empty broth bowl aside and leaned across the table at her. His expression was stern and no nonsense.

"Listen to me Adrasteia," he said. "We've come a long way, and been through a lot together. I've seen how tough you can be. How strong you have it in you to be, and that's precisely why you _don't_ need me. The gods chose you for these visions, and there's got to be a reason for that. You just need to believe it yourself."

Adrasteia sniffed and stared down at the half-eaten fish lying on the plate in front of her.

"What about Delphi?" she said eventually.

"What about it?"

"This is a war," she said. "And I'm no general. No one here is except for you."

"And him." Themistocles nodded in the direction Ithius. "And Callisto if you can get her in here. There are plenty in the city right not that can do what I do. In Delphi I'm nothing special. Just a diplomat here on a mission. I have no power and no authority. In Athens I'm an Archon. I can to help this war in a single day there than I could here in a month spent preparing."

"And all from a hundred leagues away?" Adrasteia laughed bitterly. "The Spartans are practically at our doorstep. What good is you leaving to raise an army when Delphi could be in ashes by the time it gets here?"

A strange smile lit up Themistocles' face, and Adrasteia frowned in confusion. Why was he grinning all of a sudden? It was then that the answer hit her.

"There's already an army, isn't there?" she said.

Themistocles nodded.

"And it's already on its way here."

"But how..." Adrasteia began, then she paused as she realised she did not even need to ask the quesiton. "You knew, didn't you," she said slowly as still greater realisation dawned on her. "You knew all along that this coup in Sparta was going to lead to a war."

"No." Themistocles shook his head. "I didn't _know._ Nobody can _know_ something like that, but I suspected. Athens and Sparta have long been rivals, and when your city's marching into the arena against what is possibly the strongest, largest, best trained fighting force in all of Greece, you learn not to wait for them to punch you. The moment we heard the rumours about Demosthenes, we voted for the formation of an army. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of the motion. It was just starting to be mustered when I left the city. By now it's probably been formed and if it has, it will be marching for Delphi even as we speak. With them here, there's a chance that this city doesn't fall. Not a great chance, I'll grant you, but a chance nonetheless."

"But if they're on there way here already, why do you need to go and meet them?" Adrasteia said. "They'll come to you if you just stay here."

"Because they're an army in the field," Themistocles said matter-of-factly. "An army in the field needs a leader, and of all the men in Athens, I'm the one best qualified to be that leader."

"And what do you propose we do in the mean time?" Adrasteia shot back. "Cool our heels waiting for you? The Spartans are only a couple of days from the city at most. Your army could be only gods know how far away. We could all be dead and ash by the time you get back here."

"Except you won't," Themistocles said. "I've got faith that you're all strong enough to hold out as least as long as it takes for me to get back."

"That's a lot to put on faith alone. I know temple clergy who wouldn't risk so much."

"Maybe that's because they put their faith in the wrong things," Themistocles said with a sly half-smile.

Adrasteia fell silent. What exactly did he mean by that? Across from her, he dropped his spoon into the now empty broth bowl and pushed his seat back from the table so that he could stand. Adrasteia stood too, moving to stand in front of him as he rounded the table.

"I really can't stop you doing this, can I?"

"Not when you know that I'm right, no."

Adrasteia took a deep breath and nodded.

"I hate you when you start making sense."

Themistocles' smile widened.

"You must hate me a lot." Adrasteia was not sure what to say to that. "If you want my advice..." Themistocles continued, "...then I would continue with the current plan. Try to get Callisto into the city."

For a moment the brief image of Callisto and her shifting visage flashed in Adrasteia's memory and she felt her face sour.

"Are you sure?" she said. "We still don't know if she can be trusted."

"No we don't," he agreed. "But would you rather have someone like her running around out there getting up to gods only know what, or would you rather have her here, right under your nose where you can keep an eye on her? Besides, she might have some of the answers we're after, and the only to get them is if she's close by."

Adrasteia looked at Ithius.

"And what about him?"

"I leave that up to you," Themistocles said, following her gaze. "I'd be more inclined to trust him than Callisto, but ultimately the decision is yours. I won't be here, so it wouldn't be fair for me to make it for you."

Adrasteia took another deep breath.

"Alright," she said and stuck her hand out, not really sure how else she was supposed to say goodbye. "I'd say it was nice knowing you..."

"...but it really wasn't?" Themistocles offered, shaking her outstretched hand.

This time it was Adrasteia's turn to offer up a sly smile.

"It had its moments," she said. Themistocles returned the grin, then dropped a gracious bow that would not have been out of place if he were addressing a queen.

"I'm sure we shall see each other again," he said. "Until then though, I'll just say good luck."

"To you too," Adrasteia said. "I think we're all going to need it."

Themistocles nodded then turned and strode away, leaving her standing by the table alone. She watched him leave, drumming her fingers absently against the table's surface as she did so, her mind wandering over everything he had just said. Ithius. Could she trust him? Callisto seemed to, but then that was hardly a ringing endorsement. He had saved them on the road though, when Themistocles, Nikias, and herself had fallen into a Spartan ambush, and he had offered sanctuary and aid – however brief – when he had had no other reason to do so. He did not appear in her visions either, which presumably meant he was not a danger, or was it simply that he was not a significant one? She hated not knowing either way.

Then there was the matter of what he had told the Oracle the previous evening. She did not want to believe it. He did not even seem to want to believe it, but it _did_ make a certain kind of twisted sense. She recalled her meeting Pelion in Sparta, and how cryptic he had been that day. It all was so much clearer now though, and terribly so to boot. She felt a chill of fear crawling up her spine. If Ithius was telling the truth, and Cronus really was trying to return to the world of the living, how could it be stopped? She knew comparatively little of Titanic lore, but what she did know was the the world had been wilder in their time, full of plenty, but also fiercer in its dangers. Lives back then had often been brutal and, more importantly, short, or so the temples to the Olympians said. It was the Gods that had brought the light of true civilisation with them when they had taken the throne of the world, and for the first time humans – aided by Prometheus – had risen to claim some degree of dominion over the earth. She found herself wondering just what the return of a Titan like Cronus might mean, and she did not like the direction her thoughts led her.

Shaking her head, she tried to return her thoughts to the here and now. Themistocles was gone, and while she felt she could trust the Oracle, it would do her little good to talk actually go to her. Her Mistress knew even less about what was going on than she did, and that brought her back around to Ithius again, the lone potential ally left to her. Sighing, she started across the room toward where he sat alone at another table, her mind finally made up. Themistocles had said the choice was hers, but in truth it was barely a choice at all.

"Morning," she said as cheerily as she could manage while she slid down onto the seat opposite him.

Ithius looked up at her. There was a tired look in his eyes and his brow was knotted with worry.

"You left off 'good'," he said.

"It didn't look like you were in that kind of mood," Adrasteia replied, and Ithius chuckled.

"I guess I'm not, no," he said and smiled.

Adrasteia returned the smile, immediately beginning to relax around the former Helot. He was quite different to Themistocles. Where the Athenian Archon was quick witted and sly, Ithius seemed open and straightforward.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked, and Ithius shrugged.

"As well as can be expected, which is to say not that well at all. I... um... had a lot on my mind."

Adrasteia gave a dry laugh.

"Tell me about it."

Ithius frowned at her.

"More nightmares?"

She mentally cursed. She had forgotten she had let slip about the nightmares on the ship.

"Maybe," she said, cagily. Ithius just tilted an eyebrow at her.

"Still not going to be straight with me?"

Adrasteia snorted at him.

"You're one to talk," she said. "Or was all that stuff about Cronus yesterday not something you could have told me on the boat?"

"You never asked, and I didn't-" Ithius cut off sharply as two priests of the temple entered the hall carrying steaming bowls of broth. He leaned forward across the table at her. "I didn't know you were getting messages from the gods!"

"Who says that's what they are?"

Ithius fixed her with a steady stare.

"What do you see in them?" he said.

"That's none of your—"

"You see people right?" Ithius pressed, cutting her off before she could finish. "People and places. Maybe ones you know. Maybe ones you don't, but they come through clear as day anyway, yes?"

Adrasteia suddenly felt like she was going to start sweating.

"That doesn't mean-"

"Did you see Callisto in them?"

Adrasteia stopped mid protest, her eyes narrowing.

"How did you know?" she said softly.

"I knew an Oracle once," Ithius said, and there was a note of sadness to his tone that had not been there before. "I asked her once about what she would see. She told me that sometimes you see the ones you know, even love, but more often you see the ones you don't."

"That doesn't mean I saw Callisto."

"True," Ithius said. "But the way you've been treating her... You knew her before you ever laid eyes on her."

"Of course I did," Adrasteia protested again. "She's _Callisto_!"

Ithius shook his head.

"That's her reputation you're talking about," he said. "I'm talking about her. You knew her face."

Adrasteia felt her blood run cold. Was there anything Ithius did not know, or had not figured out?

"Well," he said eventually. "Am I right, or am I wrong?"

She stared at him intently, trying to read him the same way Themistocles had always seemed to be able to read her, but his face was as blank as slate. Could she really trust him? This was the moment, she realised. Choosing to walk over and talk to him had been easy, but this was the moment she actually had to make her choice and live with it.

"Alright," she said. "Yes. You're right. I saw her face, in my dreams..." she paused and swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, "but not just hers. I saw others too. Pelion, Demosthenes, and Callisto; I knew them all before I ever met them."

"And did you see anything else?"

Adrasteia took a deep breath.

"An army," she said. "Whether they were Spartans, or Followers or both, I don't know. There's another person too. I can't tell if it's a man or a woman, but they're there, wrapped in shadows that seem almost alive."

Ithius sat very still at that, and Adrasteia's eyes narrowed.

"You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

Ithius gave a slight nod.

"I do," he said quietly. "In Tryxis, Callisto was fighting... something like what you described. She called him Mortius. I think he might have been a man once, but the shadows were following him everywhere he went, like they were a part of him..." he paused then shrugged. "...or he was a part of them. I'm not really sure. Either way, Callisto said he was some big power within the Followers, but even she doesn't know much more than that."

Adrasteia felt her blood run cold as she listened to him, the room a around her suddenly seeming far less safe than it had done, with the shadows lurking all around it looming all that much larger in her mind.

"What you said on the ship," she said, keeping her voice low. "That Callisto is some kind of champion chosen by the gods... If that's true, do you suppose it's how she knows so much about what's going on?"

"I don't know if it's true," Ithius admitted. "Leonidas believed it was though. And he believed that Callisto was trying to help."

"So that's why you're helping her," Adrasteia said, finally feeling like she was beginning to understand him a little better. "You feel like you owe it to Leonidas."

"He was my closest friend," Ithius said, and Adrasteia could hear the pain in his voice as he spoke those words. "And maybe you're right. Maybe at first that was the only reason. The more time I spend with her though, the more I think I start to see in her what it was he was seeing all along."

"Even after what we heard yesterday?"

Ithius shot her a look.

"You know that can't be true," he said, only a hint of sharpness edging into his voice. "I've been with her since the forest camp, through the fire at Tryxis and then our training on the ship. She's barely been out of my sight the entire time. She couldn't have been the one who burned that village, and you know that as well as I do."

"But you have to admit it's a little weird, right?" Adrasteia pressed, not willing to give up so easily. "I mean, she's kind of distinctive. I think it would be hard to confuse her with someone else."

"If you want an explanation from me, I don't have one. There has to be one though and we just have to find it."

"And that's why I'm talking to you. We both know there's more to this than Demosthenes just wanting to get his war on."

"Cronus," Ithius nodded, at which Adasteia smiled.

"Exactly. There's something else from my dreams I didn't tell you about yet. Behind all those people – behind Callisto, Pelion, Demosthenes, this 'Mortius' character and the army marching with them, there's something else; some presence that I can't make out. Whatever it is though, it's powerful. When I try to look at it, I can't quite make it out. It slides around the edge of my vision like its not really there, but I know it is all the same." She held a hand to her stomach. "I feel it in here, right down in the pit of me, and it frightens me more than anything else in those dreams. Truth be told, I'm almost glad I can't see it. If I did..." she trailed off, looking at Ithius expectantly.

"You think it's him, don't you?" he said after a moment of contemplation.

"After what you said yesterday, it has to be doesn't it? If these nightmare of mine are messages from the gods themselves, wouldn't it make sense for them to be a warning about Cronus' return?"

Ithius watched her steadily for a while.

" _If_ they're messages from the gods," he said eventually, " why would they send them to you? No offense, but you're an Oracle's handmaiden. Why not send them to the Oracle herself?"

Adrasteia gave a sigh of frustration.

"I don't know, but then if you're right, they also sent Callisto of all people to deal with the problem. The gods don't seem to be making terribly rational decisions of late."

Ithius gave a dry smile.

"You may just have a point there."

Adrasteia grinned back, finally beginning to feel like she was getting somewhere. After weeks of not knowing what was going on, it felt good to be pulling back the curtain like this.

"Okay then," she said, leaning forward again in a conspiratorial manner. "Supposing we're both right, and that Callisto and my visions are linked, and Cronus is trying to break free, what do we do next? How do we stop it?"

Ithius paused for a moment, glancing all about them and then turning back to face her. Without a word he reached inside the leather jerkin he was wearing over his shirt and produced a somewhat dog eared looking book. Laying his arm on the table to avoid any curious onlookers catching a glimpse of the thing, he laid it flat on the table and pushed it across to her. She slanted an eyebrow at him.

"Being a little overly cautious don't you think?" she said taking the book carefully from him.

"After having your best friend betrayed and finding out another man you've known since you were a child has been involved in a secret conspiracy to take control of a city and start a war, you begin to get a little paranoid," Ithius said simply.

Adrasteia gave him a sympathetic smile, that quickly turned to a frown as she started flipping through the book.

"What is this?"

"I'm not really sure. It seems to be a book on philosophy. There's a lot in it about the nature of the world and how the universe is divided into layers of reality. There's something about how some of those layers might be more or less substantial than the rest, and a lot about the power of will, but to be honest I couldn't really make much more sense of it than that."

"I meant this." Adrasteia turned the book so he could see where the pages had been torn out, the few tattered remnants left clinging to the spine soaked through with what appeared to be dried blood.

"That's the reason I'm showing it to you," Ithius said. "In Sparta there was a man, an Athenian historian called Monocles, who seemed have figured out a lot about what the Followers were up to. He was the reason I managed to find Callisto face down in the Pneuma that put her into the coma she only just recovered from."

"So now where is he?" Adrasteia asked. She had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"Dead," Ithius said, confirming her suspicions. "That book was found next to him in some stables. He'd been stabbed. The pages were missing even then."

"And you think they're the reason he was killed?"

Ithius nodded.

"He was the one who told me..." he trailed off, eyeing her carefully. "He was the one who told me that this war that Demosthenes is waging is all about Greeks killing Greeks. The more of us that die, the more pressure placed on the barrier that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. It's that same barrier that holds Cronus in Tartarus and the weaker it gets..."

"...the easier it becomes for him to return," Adrasteia finished for him.

"Exactly," Ithius nodded, pointing at the book. "Whoever killed Monocles knew that those pages had a way to stop them. Some process, or weakness, or whatever. They were important, and so the murderer destroyed them."

Adrasteia looked back down at the book. Was what Ithius was saying true? She supposed it could be. It made about as much sense as everything else that had happened recently, and whatever was in those pages had apparently already cost a man his life. Again she felt a shiver run up her spine

"Who else knows about this?" she asked, no longer certain she trusted anyone else in the hall.

"Just me and you," Ithius said. "And Callisto."

"Callisto again?" Adrasteia said, feeling her stomach tighten at the mention of the other woman's involvement. How was it she always seemed to be at the centre all that was horriiific?

"If anyone has a right to know, it's her," Ithius said. "She's the reason Monocles was even looking into this in the first place."

Adrasteia sighed.

"Alright then," she said as she tried to put her reservations about Callisto to one side for the time being. "Let's try and think this through rationally. We think the missing pages from this book have some kind of information on them that will help us deal with Cronus..." Ithius nodded as she spoke. "...but we don't have the pages..."

"Which means we need to find another copy of this book," Ithius said, sliding the damaged copy back across the table with his index finger to tuck it back into his jerkin.

"Well, I suppose we could try the city archives," Adrasteia said, mulling the problem over. "Delphi's an old city and there are probably all kinds of books hidden away in there. The only problem might be tracking it-"

Before she could finish there came shouts from the corridor outside the feast hall, along with the sounds of running feet. Across the table from her, Ithius shot her a confused look. Without a word, the two of them stood and made their way across the room to cluster by the large oaken doors that led to the rest of the temple. Someone had thrown one of them open, and in the corridor beyond, temple guards could be seen running for the main entrance. Away in the distance, the city's signal bell began to chime. It was not the usual sonorous gonging that signaled the arrival of a ship at the docks, or a merchant caravan, or even an envoy from another city. Instead, the air was filled with the mad and desperate clanging that forewarned of an approaching danger.

"What is it?" Ithius called the to running soldiers. "What's going on?"

"Is it Spartans?" Adrasteia added hurriedly. How could they have come so far so quickly? They should still have been days away.

"Not Spartans," one of the soldiers said, pausing briefly in his dash down the corridor. Adrasteia recognised him as Maretes from the night before. "We just got message from a runner. It's Captain Barabus. He's returning to the city."

"Already?" Adrasteia said, feeling perplexed. "But he only rode out to speak with the Followers this morning."

"Yeah, well, they found something out on the coast that was a little more important than a bunch of half crazed zealots living wild."

Adrasteia shot Ithius a worried look. Out on the coast...

"Like what?" Ithius said, taking a step forward. "What did they find."

"Callisto," Maretes answered. "They caught Callisto."

* * *

Bound at the wrists with feet aching from being dragged behind the Delphian soldiers' horses all morning, Callisto looked disheveled and dirt streaked as she approached the city gates. She paused for a moment to look up at the familiar city walls. This was where it had really begun, where Xena and herself had first truly matched wits against each other. Callisto was not really sure what nostalgia felt like, but she imagined it might feel something like she was feeling now.

She felt a tug on the rope tying her to the horse in front as the slack in it ended and it pulled taught sharply. Momentarily off balance, she stumbled forward, collapsing to her knees on the dirt trail that led into the city, much to the amusement of some of the soldiers around her. Glaring at them darkly, she regained her footing, straightened her back, marching through the gates with her chin raised as if she were a queen returning to her palace rather than a prisoner being marched to an uncertain fate.

As they passed through the gate, she was hardly surprised to be greeted by a small horde of jeering, angry townsfolk. Word of her capture had already spread like wildfire it seemed, and lines of people were beginning to snake off through the streets, their hatred only just held in check by a thin chain of soldiers obviously redirected from other posts at the last minute in order to help keep order. At the first sight of her striding along behind the horses as if she owned the city, their shouted taunts grew louder and more intense. Most were furious yells and curses, their number so many that they all began to blend into one another almost straight immediately. Every now and then though, between the angry braying of the masses, she would catch something else, a pitiable weeping carried on the wind and holding questions as to why. Why had she taken someone's husband? Why someone elses' daughter or son? The voices raised a churning, queasy sensation deep inside her and an image of a faceless legion with her darkly grinning doppleganger filled her mind.

Doing her best to ignore those few mournful voices and shake off the unpleasant sensations they conjured, she turned her attention to Athelis. Like her, he was bound at the wrists, and being dragged along behind a horse. Unlike her, he had not been able to keep pace with the brisk trot Barabus had ordered his men to move at, and now he was stumbling and skidding in the dirt, his wrists bloodied where his bindings had bitten into his wrists after being pulled taught numerous times whenever he had failed in his efforts to keep up.

"How're you holding up?" she called to him over the tumult of shouted insults.

Athelis shot her a dark glare.

"How come, whenever I follow you, we always seem to end up hip deep in trouble?" he called back.

Callisto flashed him a grin.

"Maybe I could say the same thing about you!" she shouted back playfully, only to catch the soldier whose horse she was tethered to glowering at her. He was a big man, powerfully built, although just the wrong side of portly to be considered truly muscular. His eyes were naturally narrow, and now that he was annoyed, he had a pronounced squint.

"No talking from the prisoners," he snapped and Callisto tilted her head in response, taking his measure in an instant.

"And you'll be stopping me how exactly?" she asked.

The man drew his horse up, his expression changing from one of annoyance to outright anger.

"I could tie your mouth shut for one," he said.

"And I could jam both your thumbs into your eyes when you try," Callisto replied cheerfully. "Care to come on over here so I can demonstrate?"

The big man's lip curled upward in a snarl and, releasing the reins, he shifted in his saddle, clearly about to take her up on her offer. Callisto waited patiently, flexing her fingers in anticipation, but before the man could dismount, Barabus appeared behind him to lay a hand upon his shoulder.

"Don't presume she's helpless just because her hands are bound," he said, watching her intently as he did so. "She's like a wild animal. All the more dangerous when cornered or captured."

Callisto pouted at him.

"Here to spoil my fun?" she said. Barabus shook his head.

"Here to escort you to your new abode," he replied, "Or perhahps it might be more accurate to say, return you to your old one. Look familiar?"

He gestured ahead of them, and Callisto realised the rest of the procession had halted too. They were all of them standing at the centre of a semi circle of jeering locals, and at the far end of the circle was a loomed a low, single story building with a thatched roof. It had a dour look to it, made up as it was of dark granite so old that mosses and lichens had crawled into the cracks between almost every stone. It's single main door was small and heavy looking, built from thick oak and with a narrow sliding hatch at roughly head height. There were few windows, but those there were, like the door, were small and barred with ancient, well wrought iron. It was the above ground entrance to the Delphi city dungeon, a place she remembered all too well.

"Ah, my summer home!" she announced, with a grin. "I do so hope you've kept it spic and span for me."

"You'll get to find out for yourself in just a moment," Barabus sneered, then, turning back to the rest of his men, he barked "DISMOUNT!"

The soldiers did as they were commanded. Several took charge of the horses while the rest fanned out to create rough but ready perimeter. Finally the few remaining men that included Barabus, and the two soldiers holding the ropes that bound Callisto and Athelis, started for the dungeon's main front entrance.

The jeering of the crowd worsened as she was led toward the building, and a few stones were even hurled, although none of them found their mark, and the guards quickly dealt with the throwers. Callisto simply did her best to appear unfazed by all that was happening around her, but in truth everything that was going on was a little too keen a reminder of her past. She had spent several months trapped inside, but when she had managed to break free, she had cut a violent swathe of blood and destruction across the surrounding lands until she had finally been stopped by Xena when the other woman had left her to die in quicksand down on the dunes near the coastal cave she and Athelis had spent the previous night camped out in. Since her return, she had never had to face the consequences of her past quite so directly as this. She had always thought she would be able to handle it, that it would not truly bother her.

Now she was not so sure.

Barabus reached the door ahead of the small procession and banged loudly on it. The small hatch slid open, revealing a sullen, pale faced man Callisto did not recognise on the other side. He and Barabus exchanged a few brief words, before he ducked out of sight with an accompanying jangle of keys. Less than a moment later she heard the sound of a bolt sliding back, followed by a loud creak as the door swung outward revealing the dark entry hall within.

Three soldiers stepped up behind Callisto and a fourth stepped up behind Athelis. Each of them had their swords drawn. The two men holding their bindings headed into the dungeon, tugging insistently at the ropes that held them. Athelis began to shuffle forward, but Callisto remained routed to the spot, causing Barabus to shoot her a caustic look.

"Well?" he demanded. "What are you waiting for? Get moving."

Another insistent tug at their bindings made Athelis glance at her questioningly. Callisto just shrugged then turned to face the baying, furious crowd. She smiled widely and lifted her bound wrists to wave at them as if they were adoring rabble rather than a hate filled mob. The shouted cries of bile and hate roared even louder but she took no notice. Instead, she span on her heel and set off toward the prison, the smile dying on her lips as she went.

"Come on then," she said as she strode past Barabus. "I'm just dying to see what you've done with the place."

Inside, the prison was much as Callisto remembered it; dark and damp, and filled with the smells of some fifty or more unwashed and prisoners. Barabus and his soldiers led them through a receiving chamber where a single guard was seated at a bench, the remains of his breakfast staining his shirt. The man blanched a little at the sight of her, and Callisto winked at him as she passed. Beyond the receiving room was the prison's main guard post, and beyond that a single square chamber with a heavy door in each wall.

Barabus turned and gestured, and the guard from earlier came hurrying forward, a loop of keys jangling in his hand as he moved to the door straight ahead of them. With loud clacking sound, the door was unlocked and swinging inward, revealing a long dark corridor, lined with damp and dingy cells, and lit only by the strips of light that were filtering in from the one or two cells that had narrow windows situated high on their rear walls. At the end of the corridor was a single door, made from solid oak, and heavily reinforced by thick black iron ribs and hinges. Callisto felt her gut turn cold at the sight of it.

There came another tug at her bindings, and she obligingly stepped into the corridor. The cells were empty in this part of the prison, and she wondered if any of them had been occupied since her last escape. Barabus' men wasted not time in dragging Athelis over to one of them. The guard with the keys opened the cell up, and the soldier watching over Athelis – a big man with a dour face – cut his bindings and then motioned toward the door with his head.

"Inside," he growled.

Athelis glared at the man, but obliged anyway, starting forward only to have the soldier trip him as he entered. He stumbled, only just managing to keep from falling, then span quickly, his eyes lighting up with fury, but before he could even take a step the cell door was swinging shut in his face.

"When I get out of here-" he began, only to be cut short when the soldier spat at his feet.

"You ain't getting out of here," the larger man grunted. "Not unless we drag you out on the end of a hang man's rope."

With that he turned and started back toward the crowd around Callisto, leaving Athelis to fume silently in his cell. Callisto narrowed her eyes as the soldier drew closer to her.

"You got some kind of a problem with me?" the big man rumbled, noticing her glare.

"Yes," she nodded. "Come a little closer and I'll show you exactly how much of one."

The man gave her a dirty look and was about to take a step forward, when Barabus intervened.

"At ease soldier," the captain said, stepping between the big man and Callisto. "Don't underestimate her just because she's bound. She'd turn you inside out if she ever got her hands on you."

"Why Captain," Callisto purred. "You do say the nicest things."

"And that's enough from you!" Barabus snarled as he rounded on her. "Speak out of turn again and I'll have you gagged." He gestured toward the reinforced door at the end of the corridor. "Now move."

Callisto's grin widened and she mimed stitching her lips shut as best she could manage with her wrists bound together. She sauntered past him, doing her best to make her compliance look as if it were entirely her choice. Despite her outward bravado, she could feel a queasiness in her stomach as she made her way down toward the door and the cell beyond. She had spent a long time trapped in that cell, and in any number of other dark, silent places. Each and every time, the only company she had had, had been her own hatred and rage, and similarly each and every time it had eaten away at her that little bit more, until eventually she had barely been able to remember how to feel anything but anger and bile. Needless to say, incarceration was not a state she handled well. Nevertheless, she would keep her back straight and her chin raised. She could not afford to appear any other way than in complete control.

The guard with the keys had already moved ahead of her, and by the time she reached the cell door, he had it open, revealing the dark granite walls of the cell beyond. It was a roughly ten foot square, almost completely featureless save for its damp, lichen covered walls and a quartet of thick mettle bolts embedded in he ground. Callisto remembered the chair that she and Athelis had burned for fuel the night before. Those bolts had secured it to the floor at the centre of the cell, and it had taken the brute strength of several of her men to rip it from them and carry it away when she and her war band had escaped the first time around. Memories of the beatings she had suffered while strapped to that chair intruded darkly on her thoughts. They had been often, but irregular, whenever the guards had some form of pent up frustration to unleash really, but no matter how frequently or how savage they had been, she had never once cried out. She had not given them the satisfaction then, and she would not give Barabus the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort now.

"What are you waiting for?" Barabus' voice jolted her from her reverie. "Get inside."

She cursed herself silently, realizing she had been standing almost dumbstruck in the doorway. She was about to step over the threshold when, from outside the corridor, she heard the sounds of raised voices.

"What on earth..." Barabus began, clearly noting it at the same time. Before he could completely turn around however, the source of the voices came to them. The door that led back into the rest of the prison hammered back on its hinges and Ithius came striding through. He had his sword with him, Callisto noted, strapped across his back, and his face was set in a tight, grim mask. Adrasteia was just behind him, hurrying to keep pace. She looked far more nervous than Ithius, and Callisto supposed she could hardly blame her. Behind her came on of Barabus' soldiers, a desperate panicked look on his face.

"I'm sorry sir!" he was shouting. "We tried to stop him. Really we did, but he just barged through us."

Barabus waved a hand at the soldier to be silent, then stepped forward to block Ithius' path. Ithius stopped in front of him and the two men glared at each other silently for a moment before Barabus finally spoke.

"What's the meaning of this intrusion Helot?" His voice was ice. "This is the business of Delphi. You have no reason to be here..."

At that, Ithius' gaze flicked past Barabus toward Callisto. The Delphian captain tracked it to her, then turned back to Ithius again.

"...or do you?" he finished questioningly. Ithius drew himself up to his full height.

"You have a friend of mine trussed up over there captain," he said, nodding toward Callisto. "I'm here to make sure that your city's rules are being follower and that she hasn't been harmed in any way."

" _Our_ city," Barabus sneered. "Not yours. What would you know of Delphi's rules?"

"Only what I'm reliably informed of by one of your citizens."

Adrasteia shifted uncomfortably at that but said nothing, even when Barabus shot her an accusing look.

"I do not need to be reminded of my duties," Barabus said, turning his attention back to Ithius. "Take a look at you _friend_ if you must. You'll see that she had not been harmed. Not yet at any rate."

Ithius did not even pause, striding around Barabus even before he had finished speaking, straight to Callisto's side.

"You're okay?" he said, eyeing the bindings around her wrists. "They didn't harm you at all did they?"

Callisto cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Really Ithius?" she said. "You honestly think any of them would be standing here now if they'd tried?"

Ithius smiled and nodded.

"I'm fine too, thanks for asking," Athelis chimed from his cell.

"More's the pity," Adrasteia shot back. "Another fine mess you've gotten yourself into!"

"Enough," Barabus barked. "All of you! And you!" He stalked angrily up to Ithius. "I had to see it with my own eyes. You really are a friend of this woman!?"

"In a manner of speaking," Ithius nodded. Barabus' jaw muscles tightened.

"What about you?" He looked back over his shoulder at Adrasteia. "Considering we caught your brother with her, I take it she's a friend of yours as well?"

Adrasteia swallowed nervously.

"Not a friend as such, but yes," she nodded. "I know her."

"If Callisto's your friend, I'd hate to see what you call an enemy," Barabus muttered darkly. "Guards!" he barked. "Arrest them both!"

"W... wait!" Adrasteia stammered. "What!?"

"You're associates of a wanted criminal," Barabus snapped back at her. " _The_ wanted criminal as a matter of fact, and as Captain of the City Guard, my duty is to see that all threats to this city are dealt with."

"But we're no threat-" Adrasteia began to protest.

"That remains to be seen," Barabus shot back.

He made some kind of signal with his hand, and three more of his soldiers, including the large man that had spat at Athelis, that had slipped back into the corridor at his earlier shouted command began to advance on Adrasteia and Ithius. Adrasteia began to back down the corridor toward Ithius, her hands raised, palms empty as if to show she was not even armed. For his part, Ithius' hand was already at his sword hilt.

"This is unnacceptab-" he began.

"What is acceptable and what is not is not for you to decide." Barabus cut him off sharply. "The city may be indebted to you for helping our Oracle's handmaiden return to us, but that does not excuse consorting with its enemies. If you were the ones to bring herhere as well..." he thrust an accusing finger toward Callisto. "...then you'll be lucky if I don't have you sharing a noose with her come the day of her execution."

"You're not arresting us," Ithius said firmly, giving only a little ground before the advancing soldiers as they advanced. " _Any_ of us." He nodded toward Callisto and Athelis. "I don't want to hurt any of you, but I will if I have to. We're all going to walk out of here, and you're going to let us..." He had not moved, but there was a threatening air about him now that had not been there before, and for the first time, Callisto thought she may have heard genuine anger in his voice.

"This isn't Sparta, Helot," Barabus replied, taking a step toward Ithius and reaching for his own sword where it hung at his hip. "You have no influence here. No allies either. There's no way out of this place but through me, and that isn't going to happen while I draw breath. Are you sure that is how you want this to be?"

"If that's how it has to be," Ithius replied. "There's too much at stake, and I owe too much to let you cage Callisto like this."

Adrasteia was almost at Callisto now, with Ithius between them both and the soldiers. She looked back over her shoulder at her.

" _Do something,"_ she mouthed silently. Callisto frowned.

" _Like what?" s_ he mouthed back

" _Anything!"_ Was Adrasteia's silent reply.

Callisto rolled her eyes and sighed. Striding casually back down the corridor she stepped out in front of Ithius. Immediately, every drawn blade in the room was centred on her. She gave them all a mischievous grin.

"Easy boys," she said, holding up her hands and taking another step forward. "We wouldn't want anyone getting hurt now, would we?"

"Stay right where you are!" Barabus snapped at her, and she turned to face him. There was a quiver in his hands that suggested fear, but the look in his eyes was only one of fury.

"Oh do calm down Captain," she chided. "I'm not about to try and escape. Quite the opposite in fact." She looked back down the corridor at her erstwhile saviour. "I'm a big girl, Ithius. I don't need any great hero trying to ride in and save me, and to prove it..." She started back down the corridor and over to her cell, this time stepping neatly inside without any hesitation.

"You see?" she said, backing up to the centre of the small dark room, standing pretty much exactly where she had once been strapped down to the chair. "Not going anywhere, so there really is no need for everyone to be getting themselves killed now is there."

"Perhaps not killed," Barabus snarled, "But they still associated with you and lied about it. They don't walk free either."

"Actually captain, that's exactly what they are going to do."

All eyes turned at the sound of a new voice in the conversation. It was a man Callisto had never seen before, aged yet still vital, with grey hair turning to white and a neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in the white and red robes of the Temple of Apollo and was flanked by two more Temple members similarly attired.

"Master Aegon," Barabus sounded surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Seeing to it that our Oracle's wishes are carried out," the man called Aegon said, stepping more fully into the corridor. "She received word that you had captured Callisto. Not an easy task as I'm sure you yourself would admit having failed at it several times before..." He let that comment hang in the air for a moment causing Barabus to almost visibly bristle.

"...Understandably, she was hesitant to believe it really true," Aegon continued. "So she dispatched me as her eyes and ears to ensure what we were hearing was actual fact and not just simple rumour. Imagine then my surprise to find that not only was it true and that Callisto had indeed been captured, but that she, of all people, should be the one person in the room when I walk in showing some actual restraint." His eyes narrowed as he looked about the room. Some of the soldiers fidgeted nervously under his gaze, but Barabus' only seemed to stiffen all the more.

"I was just doing my duty," he hissed.

Aegon took a step toward him.

"Arresting an Oracle's handmaiden and an one of the Temple's honoured guests is your duty now?"

"When she consorts with enemies of the city? Absolutely."

"None of which you have proven."

"She admitted as much herself."

Aegon paused, turning his attention to Adrasteia.

"Is this true?" he asked.

Adrasteia looked like she just wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole.

"It is," she managed to say eventually.

"Then the Oracle will have a lot to talk to you about," he said, lifting his gaze to Callisto. " _All_ of you."

Barabus looked around confused.

"Wait... what?" he said as Aegon's two men swept past him and made there way toward the cell where Callisto was standing. They paused at the door and gestured for her to step outside again. Callisto looked between them, trying to size up if this were some kind of trick or not. In the end she decided to take her chances. After all, did she really have any other choice?

"If an Oracle wants to talk with me, then who am I to argue?" she grinned, sauntering back out as if she owned the place.

One of Aegon's men had already moved off, walking up to the prison guard holding the keys to the various cells and holding out his hand expectantly. The guard looked to Barabus, who only shook his head.

"You can't do this," he snarled at Aegon. "She's a criminal! A murderer! She made this city cower in fear for months! She doesn't deserve to be set free!"

"No she doesn't," Aegon agreed. "I'd say she probably deserves far worse. A good job then, that we aren't setting her free. The Oracle simply wishes to speak with her."

Barbabus shook his head again.

"No. This the most secure building in the city. Even more so than the Temple. If she's taken anywhere else then we run the risk of losing her. I won't release her, and you don't have the authority to make me."

"Perhaps I don't," Aegon admitted. "But the Oracle speaks with the voice of a God. Do you really want her to come down here and overrule you personally?"

Barabus gritted his teeth for a few moments then his shoulders slumped in surrender and he turned and nodded to the guard. The man sighed and passed the keys over to Aegon's follower, who in turn walked over to Athelis' cell and released him.

"I was getting bored in there anyway," Athelis said as he stepped back out into the corridor.

"Now," Aegon said, his voice cutting sharply through the tension in the air, "If everyone is ready, it's time we were making our move. The Oracle has been kept waiting quite long enough."

As the small band assembled, Callisto turned and grinned victoriously at Barabus.

"Going to miss me captain?" she teased.

"Not likely," he said, stepping into the formation just behind her. "Until I see you hang, you're not getting out of my sight."

"Oh I do so love a man with dedication," Callisto replied. Barabus only grunted in response.

As one, the group began to filter out of the prison, Aegon at its head, Adrasteia just behind him, with Callisto and Athelis, both still bound following her, and Barabus and a number of his guards behind them. They were clear of the prison and marching through the streets again when Ithius appeared at Callisto's side.

"I didn't get to say it before, but I'm glad you're alright," he said. Callisto frowned at him.

"You really were that worried about me, huh?"

Ithius shrugged.

"My people are safe now. Saf _er_ at any rate. I guess I needed to find something else to concern myself with."

"And that's why you saw fit to challenge a prison full of Delphi's best and brightest?" Callisto replied with a nasty grin. "Not what I'd call smart thinking."

"Maybe I wasn't thinking at all," he said, shooting her a wry smile. "Wonder where I could have picked that up from?"

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another long wait for an update. Sorry it keeps taking so long. The prison scene here was for some reason incredibly difficult to crack, and it ended up resolving itself a little differently to what I had planned, but in the end this way might actually streamline a scene or two down the line. The main plot should start kicking into gear in a chapter or two, once the baggage of Callisto being in Delphi is dealt with (though not resolved - that would be too easy ;-)). As usual, for anyone following along at home, thank you for sticking with me through these. Your patience and support is always appreciated.


	8. Chapter Seven: Truth Tellings

**Chapter Seven: Truth Tellings**

The daylight shadows were stretching into the afternoon by the time Adrasteia and the others finally received their second audience with the Oracle. They had returned to the temple around midday, where they had immediately been escorted under a guard maintained by Barabus to one of several antechambers normally meant to accommodate the Oracle's most distinguished of visitors. The opulence of the chamber was immediately apparent upon entering. A single west facing window was mounted high in one of the walls, allowing the golden afternoon sun to spill into the chamber, filling it with warmth and light. In the middle of the chamber was a single table, wrought of solid bronze, with gold leaf around its edges so polished that when it caught the sunlight it almost appeared to glow. At the centre of the table was a matching fruit bowl, alongside several freshly prepared decanters of various liquid refreshments. Each was so chilled that moisture could be seen beading off their sides. Around the table, pushed up against the chamber's walls, were a series of identical couches, each one sporting red velvet upholstered cushions so luxuriant that Adrasteia suspected the palaces of some kings were not so lavishly furnished. She had been in these chambers before of course, but always as a handmaiden expected to serve. Now, being asked to wait here as if she were some kind of foreign dignitary, she could not help but feel hopelessly out of place.

"You should all be seated," Aegon had said as they entered. "The Oracle has a great many audiences today, but she wishes to speak with you all when she's able. Now if you'll excuse me, I have other business to attend to." With that, he turned and headed for the door, pausing only to cast a last worried look back over his shoulder at Callisto.

For her part, the blonde warrior woman did not seem to notice. Instead, she rubbed her hands together as best as she could manage with them still bound together, and crossed to couch furthest from the door and that overlooked the entire room.

"Well isn't this just lovely!" she exclaimed, flopping theatrically down onto it, leaning back and crossing her legs as if she were a queen upon her throne. "Looks like I'm finally moving up in the world."

"Don't get too comfortable," Barabus grunted from where he had taken up position near the door after Aegon had exited. "If I get my way, I'll have you back in your cell before nightfall."

"No need to hurry on my account," Callisto replied, not even really looking at him as she spoke, but instead allowing her gaze to rove around the room. "Now do be a dear and pass me something to eat. Our breakfast was interrupted this morning and I'm absolutely famished."

Barabus fixed her with venomous glare and pulled a dagger from a small scabbard at his waist. Adrasteia felt her stomach tighten reflexively at the sight of the wicked looking weapon, but Callisto just grinned at the guard captain, apparently not at all threatened by him. Barabus advanced across the room, the dagger held up as if he were about to strike at her, but he never reached her side. Instead, he stopped when he reached the table, stooping and skewering an oversized and particularly succulent looking peach on the tip of the blade. Turning his back on her, he crossed back to his original position, where he propped himself against the wall and took a large bite out the piece of fruit.

Callisto's smile never faltered, but neither did it meet her eyes.

"You just can't get the service these days," she tutted and leaned back in the seat even further.

With a sigh Ithius crossed to the table, picking up a dish from where a number of them had been stacked beside the fruit bowl. He collected a variety of different fruits from the bowl upon it, and then proceeded to offer them around the room.

"Look," he said, approaching Callisto first. "We're none of us really friends its true..."

"You can say that again," Barabus muttered, drawing an irritated look from the former Helot.

"...But we're not enemies either," he finished. "If we're going to be cooped up in here together while we wait, the least we can attempt to do is be civil with one another."

"Here, here," Callisto nodded, reaching up and clasping a juicy looking red apple between her bound hands. She took a big bite out of it there and then, a thin line of juice running down to her chin, and then dripping onto the rich red velvet of the couch. "After all," she continued around her mouth full of apple, "manners cost nothing."

"Manners!" Barabus grunted disdainfully. "Was it manners that you were showing this morning? Was it just a simple display of civility when you attacked my men?"

"As I seem to recall it, it was you and your cronies that attacked me," Callisto retorted. "Now what kind of a welcome to a guest is that?"

"You're not a guest," Barabus snarled, his ire beginning to rise. "And you're damned right we attacked you. You'd just murdered an entire temple full of people..."

Callisto rolled her eyes as he spoke.

"I already told you that wasn't me."

"...And helped the Spartans destroy a village to the south..."

"That wasn't me either."

"Stop denying it!" Barabus snapped in frustration. "Stop acting like you're some kind of victim here! After everything you've done, no one's going to fall for it!"

"Actually," Ithius interrupted softly, "she couldn't have burned the village you're talking about."

"And how would you know?" Barabus growled.

"Because when that village burned, she was sailing back from Tryxis with us," Adrasteia said, coming to Ithius' aid.

Barabus rounded on her sharply.

"So you're siding with them now too?"

Adrasteia shook her head.

"No, but if Callisto is to be damned, it should at least be for crimes she's _actually_ committed and not just for whatever latest tragedy we need a scapegoat for."

"You should listen to the girl, Barabus," Callisto taunted. "She could teach you a thing or two about justice."

Barabus' jaw muscles visibly tightened.

"I've had enough of this," he snarled from between gritted teeth. He tossed the half eaten peach aside, and turned to stalk toward the door.

"Just one small thing before you go!" Callisto called after him. Barabus paused, his hand halfway to the door handle.

"Yes?" he all but spat.

Callisto rose from her seat, her bound hands hanging in front of her, her long fingers rolling the apple she had been eating between them playfully as she spoke.

"I was just wondering why it is you hate me so?" she said.

"You being a mass murderer of men, women and children isn't enough?" Barabus snarled.

"Not for you, no," Callisto said, stepping around the table until she was standing mere inches from him. "I know what hate looks like, Barabus. I'm something of an expert on it as a matter of fact, and the way you hate me – no, the way you _despise_ me – that's something personal." She paused, staring hard into his eyes, and Adrasteia shifted uncomfortably on the couch she was sitting on.

"What did I do to you?" Callisto asked after a time. "What did I _take_ from you?"

Barabus' teeth were clenched together so hard now that Adrasteia thought they might be about to shatter.

"Don't even think about trying to escape," he hissed after long moments that seemed to stretch for minutes on end. "There are guards outside this room, and I've ordered more to set up a perimeter around the temple. Wherever you go in this city, count on having an iron ring around you. I already let you slip through my fingers once. I won't allow you to do so again."

With that, he turned and swept out of the room, the door banging shut hard behind him.

"You know what," Callisto said, turning back to face the rest of them. "I think I might actually be wearing him down."

The rest of them could only groan in response.

"What!?" Callisto said, seemingly put out by their inability to share in her amusement.

"Why do you have to keep pushing?" Athelis asked as Callisto began to return to her seat. He'd been largely silent since they had left the prison, but Adrasteia had come to expect that whenever he was around Callisto. "Antagonise him that way, I mean? Is it really necessary?"

Callisto scowled at him.

"Feeling sorry for him, are you? Remember he'd have you swing just for speaking with me."

"I'm don't feel sorry for him. I just think we might need his help, and that pissing him off probably isn't the best way to get it."

"His _help_?" Callisto snorted in disgust. "The man's a self-important fool. What help could he possibly be?"

"He commands the city's armed forces," Ithius said, adding his voice to Athelis'. "Until Themistocles returns with the Athenians, they're all we've got to stand against Demosthenes' army with."

"May as well plant a bunch of scarecrows outside the city gates then," Callisto said. "The Spartans would chew through them just as easily."

"You think they're that easily dealt with?" Adrasteia asked, and Callisto glanced at her.

"When I used to raid around these parts, my men tangled with Delphi's guard on more than one occasion," she said dismissively. "It never went well for the Guard, and my men were definitely no Spartans."

"They managed to catch you this morning, didn't they?" Adrasteia fired back, a strange urge to defend the city guard taking root inside her.

Callisto gave an irritated snort.

"They didn't catch me," she sneered. "I surrendered to them, and if I hadn't you'd be one brother less right about now."

"So, you expect me to thank you?"

Callisto shrugged.

"You have before."

"That was before I knew you."

During their exchange, Ithius had fallen silent, his eyes far away as if he were thinking about something. Now though, he spoke up.

"How _did_ they catch you?" he asked.

"With horses and swords," Callisto replied sarcastically.

"You know what I mean," Iithius said patiently. "We left you down on the coast. Barabus and his men were supposed to be riding out to investigate some local Follower cult that was living in an abandoned temple. You shouldn't have been anywhere near each other."

"We were at that temple," Athelis said. "We could hear chanting and drumming coming from it even down on the beach where we were holed up. At the time it seemed like it would be worthwhile to check it out."

Suddenly something Barabus had said jogged Adrasteia's memory.

"Barabus was saying you murdered a temple full of people..." she began, but before she could finish Callisto shook her head.

"That wasn't us," she said. "The Followers were all dead before we even got there. Some kind of ritual suicide. Poison I think."

"They killed themselves!?"

Callisto nodded.

"But why?"

The warrior woman tilted an eyebrow at her.

"Really?" she said, as if she were honestly surprised that Adrasteia had not figured the reason out immediately. "You need me to tell you? How about this; why don't I give you three guesses."

"It's for Cronus and the barrier," Ithius said softly and Callisto rounded on him, snapping her fingers and pointing as she did so.

"Got it one," she grinned, turning her attention back to Adrasteia. "Kill enough Greeks and the barrier collapses. It doesn't matter how they die. Only that enough of them do."

A dark realisation came across Adrasteia as Callisto spoke.

"And if they're killing themselves _now_..." she began.

"...Then it's because they think they have nothing left to lose," Athelis said, clearly sharing in her realisation.

"And that Cronus' ultimate freedom is close at hand," Callisto finished for the pair of them. "Fun times for all, I'd say."

Adrasteia swallowed. Little more than a month ago she had been just another temple handmaiden, serving her Oracle as best as she could manage. Now here she was, wrapped up in something so enormous that it almost defied comprehension; a battle between the Gods of Olympus and their ancient nemesis. Even with everything she had seen and learned over the past several weeks, it was still difficult to truly believe. The visions she had been having flashed briefly in her mind, and she felt a chill run down her spine at the thought of an enemy so committed that they were willing to end their lives to achieve their ends.

"This is madness," she said quietly. "We have to stop it."

Callisto's eyes narrowed.

"What's all this 'we' business all of a sudden?"

Inisde Adrasteia, she felt irritation at the other woman's constant combativeness flare up. It flared up so sharply in fact, that it neatly severed the last of her patience like a blade slicing across taught harp strings.

"Don't do that!" she snapped.

Callisto gave her a surprised look. "Do what?"

"What you always do! Try and put a dagger in anyone you think is getting close to you! We all know there's more at stake than just some Persian threat, or Demosthenes making a power play. Cronus is trying to get free and – by fate or happenstance – we've all ended up in this together to try and stop it, so for once could you just try and work with us, and keep your usual bile and nastiness in check?"

Callisto did not reply straight away. Instead she remained silent for a moment, an amused smirk on her face at Adrasteia's sudden outburst, then she turned to Athelis.

"I'm beginning to see why you ran away from home," she said.

Adrasteia threw her hands up in exasperation.

"You're impossible!" she groaned as she moved off to stand in a corner as far away from the former warlord as she could manage.

"Isn't that the best way to be?" Callisto retorted, as she slid back down onto one of the nearby couches in a serpentine fashion. "But alright, I'm willing to admit we might need allies in this. Barabus though?" She gave a disgusted snort. "He couldn't even keep frail little me locked away. Do you really think he and his tin pot army stand a chance in Tartarus against Demosthenes and his men? It would be a massacre; the kind of straight up slaughter that would play right into Cronus' plans."

"It might not," said Ithius softly and fixing her with a pointed look as he did so. "Not if the Delphians had the right person to lead them."

Callisto stared back at him. "You can't be serious."

"For once we agree on something!" Adrasteia said, looking to Ithius in astonishment. "You really _can't_ be serious! _Her!?_ "

"Oh, I'm deadly serious, I'm afraid," Ithius looked back and forth between them. "Leonidas' father used to have a maxim he lived by; that one should always know one's enemy. Well Callisto probably knows more about what it is we're really up against than anyone else, not to mention the simple truth that she's probably the most experienced battlefield commander in the room."

"But not the only battlefield commander," Adrasteia protested. "You've led people before. Athelis has too."

"Even if he did manage to get a whole lot of them killed when he did," Callisto added.

"Hey!" Athelis protested, but she just shrugged.

"I'm not saying anything we weren't all thinking."

"It doesn't matter that we've led people before," Ithius said, trying to redirect the conversation back to the point at hand. "The people of Delphi don't know us. We're not known quantities." He fixed Callisto with a steady gaze. _"You_ are _."_

"Oh, I'm a known quantity alright!" Callisto retorted, her voice rising sharply. "I'm a butcher to them, Ithius! You've no idea the havoc I sewed, the chaos I wrought. This city was on its knees before me!"

"And you did it with an army probably half the size of their defending forces," Ithius countered smoothly. "Think about it, Callisto. Who would be better to lead them in a battle for their survival than the person who knew best how to threaten it before?"

Callisto fell silent, and Adrasteia found herself watching the other woman very carefully. There was a queasy feeling in her gut and she was not sure if it was at the sheer ridiculousness of the prospect of Callisto leading Delphi's forces, or rather the even more inconceivable notion that Ithius might actually have a point.

When Callisto spoke again, her voice was lower than normal, and it almost sounded sad. Almost.

"You don't understand," she said. "The last time I tried to lead anyone, a lot of good people ended up dying."

"More or less than if you hadn't tried in the first place?" Adrasteia asked. For once, Callisto did not seem to know how to answer.

"You're not the person you were," Ithius said. "Isn't it about time the world got to see that, and not just us?"

Callisto still did not answer. Instead she just sat quietly, hands hanging between her knees with her fingers balled into fists.

They were all still sitting in silence when the door to the chamber swung open and Aegon appeared, striding hurriedly into the room, only to stop short when he saw how quiet and still they had all become.

"Am I interrupting something?" he said with a touch of wryness to his tone.

"Just some inner contemplation," Callisto said, her usual mask of irreverence slipping quickly back into place.

"You never struck me as the contemplative type."

Callisto grinned.

"I'm full of surprises."

Aegon tilted an eyebrow at her.

"Is that so?" he said, before turning his attention solely from her to the room at large. "The Oracle has cleared her schedule for the remainder of the day. She awaits you now."

Callisto sighed as she slid to her feet.

"Well I suppose if we really must do this we should be about it." She crossed the room, flashing Aegon a nasty smile as she walked past him and out of the open door. "After all, I'm a busy woman. Places to go, people to-"

"Kill?" Aegon offered.

Callisto's smile widened.

"Now that you mention it."

* * *

The audience with the Oracle was not held in the main hall as it had been the day before. Instead, Aegon led them quickly down several side passages, bypassing some of the temple's busier locales. Adrasteia could only assume the reason for their circuitous route was an attempt to avoid Callisto being sighted by too many people on the way the meeting. She had tried to kill the Oracle after all, and the idea that she might be about to be granted a private audience – something even some kings might struggle to arrange – would no doubt set many tongues wagging. Despite Aegon's best efforts however, it was not enough to keep them from being seen completely. As they passed people in the passages, be they guards, servants, or even priests of Apollo, Adrasteia noticed that they drew many strange – and more often than not angry – glances. In one or two instances she even thought she heard muttered curses or insults as they passed by.

Callisto, as usual, was unfazed by all of it. She was obviously used to drawing less than pleasant attention wherever she went, and did not seem to care what anyone thought of her. She strode along, back straight and head held high as if she were the queen of all she surveyed, despite the fact that her hands were still bound in front of her like those of a murderer being led to their execution.

After a couple of minutes making their way through a series of winding corridors, they reached a narrow flight of stairs that headed up to the temple's second floor. Beyond those, they were led again around the edge of dormitories that Adrasteia remembered well as her place of residence in the temple. All the handmaiden's slept here, not far from their mistress, and she saw a few familiar faces coming and going in the halls as they walked. It did not take long for them to leave the dormitories behind, however, and soon they were standing right in front of the doors to the Oracle's own private quarters.

"If you would all be so kind," Aegon said, gesturing for them to wait, before disappearing through the heavy oaken doors.

Callisto slinked over to one of the passage walls and leaned against it.

"Quite the toady, isn't he," she said, then glanced at Adrasteia and smiled. "D'you think he washes her feet?"

Before Adrasteia could answer that that had normally been her job, the doors swung back open and Aegon appeared again.

"You may all enter," he said.

Callisto motioned to the door with her bound wrists.

"After all of you," she grinned. "I insist."

Adrasteia just rolled her eyes and made her way inside, Ithius, Athelis and Callisto following behind her in that order.

The Oracle's chambers were exactly as she remembered them, with an outer receiving room connecting to a bedchamber via a single arched passageway. The receiving room they were in now was luxuriously appointed with plushly cushioned couches and drapes of sheer silk that shifted in the light breeze from a nearby open window. The scent of incense hung heavy on the air in the same way it always seemed to when the Oracle was around, and there were many wreathes and garlands of fresh flowers about the room, adding their own sweet aromas to the heady incense.

Barabus was already waiting for them when they entered, standing to one side of the door with his hand on his sword hilt, remaining silent but watching them expectantly as they passed by him. The Oracle herself was kneeling off to one side before a small private shrine to Hestia. Adrasteia had always found that strange, but then the Oracle had supposedly grown up in service of the temple at Prinias, only coming to the temple of Apollo in Delphi when her Oracular gifts had first manifested. She was attired similarly to how she had been dressed the previous day, only perhaps a little simpler, her long white gown less diaphanous and more practical this afternoon.

Behind them, Adrasteia heard Aegon closing the doors lightly, the sound of which caused the Oracle to turn and regard them all steadily.

"So," she said, rising and dusting off the knees of her skirts as she did so. "I finally have you here before me, and _all_ of you this time it would seem. Now what would be the first question I should ask do you think?" She shifted her gaze to Ithius. "Should it be how it is that yesterday you felt it more important to tell me of a plot by the followers of a dead god to return their master to this world, than to tell me that a terrible warlord, long thought dead, was actually alive and in hiding barely a few leagues from this city?" She looked to Athelis next. "Or should it be how it is that one of our city's very own citizens seems to have allied themselves with its bitterest of enemies?" Finally she turned to Adrasteia, and when she spoke her voice was like ice. "Or perhaps I should start with how one of my own thought to keep all of this from me?"

Callisto glanced down the line to either side of her.

"Tough questions," she said. "Anyone else want to take them, because I'm coming up empty."

The Oracle shot her a dark look, but Callisto just flashed her a smile in return.

"My Lady Pythia, please forgive us," Ithius said, interjecting before Callisto had the chance to dig them all even deeper into a hole they were already going to have difficulty climbing out of. "I think what we all would like to say first is that it was always our intent to inform you of Callisto's presence, and no deception was intended."

Behind them, Adrasteia could practically feel Barabus tensing, but the Oracle just raised her hand in a calming gesture and he remained silent.

"Do not take me for a fool, Master Ithius," she said, her eyes narrowing as she spoke. "From what Captain Barabus tells me, it would seem that Callisto was with you on the ship back from Tryxis. Is that correct?"

Ithius nodded.

"It is."

"Then am I also correct in assuming that the only reason she was not present with you when Captain Barabus and his men escorted you back to the city, was that she had disembarked prior to your arrival and gone into hiding somewhere in the surrounding countryside?"

Ithius nodded again.

"You are."

"So your neglecting to inform us of her presence was a deception, and an intentional one no less."

"Considering her past dealings with your city, we thought it best not to announce her presence immediately," Ithius said, squaring his shoulders defensively.

"Such a decision was not yours to make," the Oracle's voice was quiet but firm. "Callisto is an enemy of Delphi, one of the worst in recent memory. There is not a village between here and Athens that did not taste her fury, or live in fear of it. It is our place to decide what is done with her, and no one else's."

"She has not returned here to be your enemy," Ithius replied, his tone equally matter-of-fact. "There is another foe on the horizon, however. One the likes of which this city has not faced in a thousand years and it is even now preparing to destroy you. King Leonidas learned of this foe's power at the cost of his own life, and the Ephors ignorance of it lost them theirs. Through it, all Callisto has stood in opposition to Demosthenes and the cult of Followers he has made himself a member of. She has been their enemy at every turn, and much as it might pain you to hear this, she means to help in anyway she can-"

"This is preposterous!" Barabus all but exploded from behind them. "My apologies Lady Pythia, but I can remain silent through this farce no longer!" He stomped forward angrily, fists clenched and with shoulders practically shaking in rage. "Her, help us!? _Her_ help us!? Thiswoman..." he jabbed an accusing finger at Callisto, "...is a murderer, plain and simple, responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of our people. She even made an attempt on your own life! She's of no more help to us than a rabid dog!"

"You do realise I'm standing right here, don't you?" Callisto said, arching an eyebrow at him.

"She knows the enemy we're facing better than any one of us," Ithius cut back in calmly before Barabus could turn on her. "Certainly better than you do, Captain."

Barabus was about to speak again, but the Oracle gestured for him to be silent and he bit off his reply, instead choosing to stand and fume silently as his mistress spoke up.

"You speak eloquently Master Ithius," the Oracle said. "More eloguently than I would have expected for a man of your background, truth be told, but there is no amount of fine words and careful rhetoric that can overcome Callisto's crimes."

"I am not asking for you to forgive her. Only that you help yourselves by allowing her the chance to help you overcome what it is you face."

"And how would she do that?" The Oracle turned her steady, unwavering gaze to Callisto, and for the first time since she had met her, Adrasteia thought the other woman looked uncomfortable.

"Spartans are the finest trained warriors in all of Greece," Callisto said. "The ragtag warband I led two years ago doesn't even begin to compare to them, and nor do your own local militia. Only the Athenian army even comes close."

Barabus bristled at that, but did not say anything.

"If our militia is no match for Demosthenes' Spartans, then how would you suggest we defend ourselves from them?" Asked Aegon from his position by the door. Callisto twisted to face him.

"With more Spartans, obviously," she said, before turning back to the Oracle. "Demosthenes has most of the army under his control, but not all of it. There are some who still remain loyal to the Ephors and the memory of King Leonidas. They broke away from Demosthenes' army at Tryxis, and the last we knew, they were headed north toward Delphi ahead of him. If we can find them, and get them to side with us-"

"And why would they help _you_?" Barabus hissed.

"Because I served Leonidas too," Callisto shot back. "I was trying to help him save Sparta."

"A bang-up job you did of that," Barabus muttered to himself. Callisto shot him a filthy look.

"My Lady," Ithius said quickly, before the other two of them could lash out at one another again. "What Callisto is trying to say is that these renegade Spartans know her, and of her relationship to Leonidas. They are led by his former right-hand man, a Captain by the name of Sentos. If we can reach him before Demosthenes' forces do, maybe we can convince them to help defend the city until Archon Themistocles' forces arrive."

"Lady Pythia, please, don't listen to them," Barabus' voice sounded more imploring now. "We have already had reports of Callisto herself attacking villages in the south ahead of the main Spartan column. They say she was leading forces much like those she led two years ago. Now, if she truly is an enemy of Demosthenes and these Followers as they claim, and she has an army at her back already, then why not attack Demosthenes directly? Instead we find her skulking around the countryside this morning among the corpses of the Followers you had sent us to question. I say they are not her enemies, but her allies, and that she killed the Followers at that temple out of fear that they might reveal her ruse to us."

"Erm, a couple of problems with that," Callisto said, and holding out her fingers in front of her and beginning to tick them off one at a time as she spoke. "One, there's no way I can be on a ship from Tryxis and attacking villages in the south at the same time."

"Then someone is obviously deceiving us," Barabus countered, glancing meaningfully over at Ithius.

"Two," Callisto continued as if he had not spoken. "If Demosthenes can trounce your rinky-dink local militia any day of the week, which he can by the way, why would I even bother with trying to trick you into trusting me?"

"To make our conquest that much simpler," Barabus argued.

"Three," Callisto continued to ignore him, "If Demosthenes does indeed want to trick you into trusting someone, wouldn't I be the last person he'd send?"

Barabus opened his mouth to argue once more, then paused with it hanging open, apparently at a loss for words. Callisto flashed him a broad grin.

"Score one for the crazy lady," she said.

Nearby the Oracle had steepled her fingers and been listening intently to the discussion. Now she lowered them to rest in her lap.

"Your opinion Master Aegon?" She said.

Aegon stood silently for a moment, as if running over everything that had been said in his mind.

"It is a fact of life that the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction," he said eventually. "The story they tell is preposterous, but to my mind, that makes it ring all the truer than a more reasonable explanation might."

Barabus could contain himself no more.

"You can't be serious," he said, his voice ringing with astonishment. "You're actually buying this nonsense?"

Aegon shook his head.

"I did not say I believed them; merely that if they were lying to us, I'm sure they could concoct a more believable story, and certainly one with far fewer holes in it."

"None of that matters!" Barabus protested, spinning back to face the Oracle again. "Callisto is a criminal! A murderer! An indiscriminate killer! We cannot ally ourselves with someone like her! That is the only truth that should be of any concern to us!"

"Which is more important to you, Captain?" Ithius asked "That you have your justice now, no matter its cost, or that you protect this city and everyone in it by whatever means available."

"Cost?" Barabus sneered back. "You know nothing of cost!" He turned to the Oracle. "My Lady, please, I beg of you, you can't listen to them! If you do, then I guarantee you, you will pay for it!"

The Oracle did not respond to that. Instead she fixed him with a hard, narrow eyed, stare. Toward the rear of the room, Aegon gave a slight cough.

"You over step your bounds Captain," he said. "The Lady Pythia is not answerable to you."

"If she even considers this madness as an option, then perhaps she should be!" Barabus snapped back. "Callisto is a danger to all of us. When we had her in our grasp before, we listened to Xena, and spared her life. Look at what misery that led to. More deaths at her hand, my own son among them!"

Adrasteia's eyes widened at that. His son!? She glanced at Callisto, but if the other woman was surprised at what she had just heard, she gave no outward sign.

"If we do the same again now..." Barabus was continuing "...maybe we will survive as this Helot claims, but at what price in future blood spilled will our own lives have been bought? How many more sons and daughters lost?"

The Oracle tilted her head slightly, her gaze locked intently on Callisto.

"Adrasteia," she said quietly.

Adrasteia stiffened, keenly aware that she had suddenly become the center of attention.

"Yes my Lady?" she said, her stomach already turning back flips.

"You've been awfully quiet through all of this, yet I would value your counsel were you to give it. What have you to say on this matter?"

On the spot like this, Adrasteia was not sure what to say. Her counsel? She was a handmaiden. Her duties had always been to attend the Oracle and to learn from her in the event that one day she may be called upon ascend to the position herself. She had never before been asked to weigh in on a decision, and especially not one as important as this.

She caught Callisto looking at her out of the corner of her eye. The blonde woman was waiting expectantly, as was everyone else in the room.

"I... uh..." she began, licking her lips as she did so. "I'd be lying if I said I completely agreed with Ithius." Expecting push back on that, she paused and waited. When no objections were immediately forthcoming, she continued on quickly. "What I mean is, I'm not sure I entirely trust Callisto either..."

Next to her Barabus began to open his mouth to speak, so she pressed on before he could drive her off course.

"...But what I can say, is that none of us would be standing here before you today if not for her. Even Archon Themistocles owes his life to her. Whatever she may be to anyone else, she's still the person who saved me, and so I can't condemn her completely..." She shot Barabus a meaningful glance. "...Even if some others might want me to."

"That's it?" Captain of the Watch spat roughly. "That's the best defence you can muster? One good deed does not undo a life time of viciousness, girl. By concealing Callisto you have all of you obstructed Delphian justice. You have aligned yourselves with an enemy of the state, and by law I should see each and every one of you executed right alongside her."

"Then why haven't you already?" Callisto butted in.

Barabus turned his burning gaze on her.

"What did you say?" he snarled, his voice falling dangerously low.

"Why haven't you strung us all up yet?" Callisto repeated casually. "If I'm as big a criminal as you say I am – which even I won't argue that I'm not – and they've already admitted to being my associates, why are we all standing here now going through this song and dance? You could have had us all dangling at the end of a hangman's rope since a half hour ago?"

Barabus was opening his mouth to speak again when the Oracle rose from her seat and laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Enough Captain," her voice was soft and even. "You have made your opinion on this matter perfectly clear." She looked past them all to Aegon at the back of the chamber. "Master Aegon, would you escort my hand maiden and her companions to some private quarters. I wish to continue this audience with Callisto alone."

Aegon's eyebrows rose at that, but he did not question his Oracle. Instead he crossed to the door through which they had all entered, pushing it open and gesturing back out into the hallway beyond.

"If you would all care to follow me..."

"My Lady-" Barabus began to protest as the others started to shuffle out of the chamber. The Oracle simply lifted her hand once more for him to be silent.

"You may leave too Barabus. I'm sure I will be quite safe. After all, I doubt you'll go that far, will you?"

Adrasteia had heard that tone before from her mistress, calm and easy, but with a steel beneath it that said she was not to be disobeyed. Barabus had obviously heard it before too. Instead of offering any further protest, he simply straightened, and nodded his head slightly before turning and heading stiffly for the door.

"Oh Captain," Callisto called after him as if she were addressing a servant rather than the head of the city guard. He froze in his tracks, and turned to face her.

"What now," he growled from between clenched teeth. Callisto smiled and lifted her bound wrists toward him.

"Be a dear and remove these would you? They're beginning to chafe terribly."

Strangely it was the Oracle who stepped forward, producing a finely worked dagger from the folds of her diaphanous white gown as she did so. Adrasteia was surprised. She had never even known her mistress kept something like that about her person. Brandishing the slim blade between her fingers, the Oracle walked over to Callisto, stepping between her and the Captain.

"Don't push your luck," she said, lifting the dagger for Callisto to see, then lowering it to slice through the ropes that held the warrior woman's wrists together.

Callisto pouted.

"Spoil my fun then why don't you," she said, but that was the last Adrasteia heard before she was ushered out into the hallway alongside Ithius and Athelis. Aegon and Barabus followed close behind them, Barabus swinging the doors closed after they were all outside, and taking up a position in front of them, his thick arms folded tightly across his chest.

A number of the Oracle's handmaidens were clustered a little way down the hall from them, speaking in hushed tones and studiously doing their best not to look as if they had been lingering there for quite some time. Adrasteia rolled her eyes. The other handmaidens did like their gossip, and this little gaggle had apparently been listening at the door. Aegon seemed to realise what they had been up to as well, because he swept forward as soon as he caught sight of them, clapping his hands together to get their attention and to keep them from trying to scatter into the various corridors that led deeper into the temple.

"Hear anything interesting recently Aphemis?" he asked, addressing the group's apparent ringleader.

The young handmaiden, a fiery redhead, cast her eyes downward toward the cold stone floor.

"Nothing of any consequence Master Aegon," she said.

"Good to hear it," Aegon nodded sternly. "Now be about your duties and attend our guests while I show to their private quarters. It's been a long day so far, and I'm sure they would all be grateful for what little rest they can manage." He turned to look back at them again. "Something tells me they won't be getting much more for quite some time."

With that he turned and set off down one of the corridors.

"This way if you please," Aphemis said, gesturing them all down the hallway behind him. The two other girls led Ithius and Athelis off ahead of them, while Aphemis herself fell in beside Adrasteia.

"It's good to have you back," she said softly. "The mistress just hasn't been herself since you left."

"Oh?" Adrasteia said, surprised at Aphemis' sudden familiarity. She and the other girl had never really been fast friends, though she supposed they had not really been rivals either. "How so?"

"She seems... I don't know... distant maybe. Like there's something distracting her all the time."

"She's an Oracle," Adrasteia said. "She spends her entire life with one foot in the now, and one foot in the future. She always seems distant."

Aphemis shook her head.

"Not like this," she said. "I've been here longer than you, and I've never seen her this way be-"

"Aphemis." Aegon's voice echoed down the hall at them, carrying with it a stern note of rebuke. He had drawn up against the wall of the hall and was waiting for them. As they walked up to him he stepped back into line beside them. "You might do better about the temple if you spent a little more time minding your duties, and a little less engaged in idle gossip. Now hurry along and help attend to the others. I've something I need to discuss with Adrasteia."

Aphemis bowed her head, her cheeks flushing scarlet in embarrasment before she darted off down the corridor.

"She wasn't gossiping," Adrasteia said, doing her best to defend the other girl.

"Of course not," Aegon said with a wry smile. "She was just discussing private matters that she has heard second hand, and that are no concern of hers, with someone also not involved. Not gossiping at all."

"Am I not involved?" Adrasteia said. She could not help but wonder if it was her visions that were responsible for the Oracle's uncharacteristic behavior recently. "Our Oracle just asked to be left alone in a room with a woman who's already tried to kill her once before. A woman I helped return to Delphi no less. I'd say that counts as involvement."

Aegon regarded her for a moment, the smile on his face growing as he did so.

"She was right," he said. "The journey did change you." Suddenly the smile vanished. "But none of that is that what I want to talk to you about."

Adrasteia frowned.

"I don't understand. What else could you want discuss?"

Without warning he placed a hand on her shoulder, bringing them both to a stop in the middle of the corridor.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news," he said softly with a voice filled with sympathy. "It's about your mother..."

* * *

"Please, have a seat," the Oracle said, gesturing toward the couch she had been sitting on mere moments before.

Callisto remained standing, rubbing at her wrists in an attempt to restore some of the circulation that had been cut off by her bindings.

"I'm fine as I am," she said.

The Oracle just shrugged. "Suit yourself."

The other woman crossed the room to a small table laid against one of the walls. Upon it was what looked to be a chilled copper jug, probably full of wine if Callisto were to hazard a guess. She was proved right when the Oracle lifted the jug and used it to fill a matching goblet with a liquid the same colour as blood.

"Drink?" she offered, holding out the goblet.

"I don't partake," Callisto sniffed and the Oracle nodded to herself.

"Ah yes," she said. "I remember now. You lack vice... save for wanton murder of course."

"We all of us need a hobby," Callisto replied sharply.

"I can think of better ones." The Oracle countered, crossing back to the couch at the centre of the room and reclining in it, one leg hooked over the other at the knee, her white gown settling so perfectly about her it was as if all her handmaidens had arranged it that way. "So..." she began, swirling the wine in her goblet as she spoke, "...here we are again after all these years. Just you and me."

Callisto frowned at her.

"You act like there's something special between us."

"Isn't there?"

"No."

"Really?"

"No."

"Nothing at all?"

Callisto crossed her arms and fixed the Oracle with a hard stare.

"Nothing at all," she said firmly.

"Then," The Oracle said, apparently confused, "if I may be blunt, why try and kill me?"

"A means to an end." Callisto replied. "It was nothing personal."

"Oh no," the Oracle shook her head. "No, no, no, no. I'm afraid that won't do as an explanation at all. You see, you tried to kill _me._ Do you understand what that means? It may not have been personal to you, but it was personal to _me._ You've made it clear that you don't care about the consequences of your actions, but you'd better start realising that around here, whether you like it or not, there are a lot of people you wronged, and when those same people come banging on our doors, demanding to know why we haven't had you strung up by your innards like the criminal you are, my saying 'It's okay. She didn't mean any of it. It was nothing personal' just won't cut it."

"Then I ask again, if I'm such a problem to you, why spare me at all?"

The Oracle lifted the goblet to her lips, eyeing Callisto across the rim of it.

"Why indeed," she said, before downing its contents in a single swallow. Gritting her teeth against the sharpness of the alcohol, she rose from the couch and crossed back to the table for a refill.

"Are you planning to drink the whole jug?" Callisto asked, arching an eyebrow at her. "A little early in the day for that kind of indulgence, isn't it?"

The Oracle returned to the couch, the full goblet clutched tightly between her fingers and for the first time, Callisto thought she could see the other woman's hands tremble slightly, although whether in fear or anger she could not determine.

"Perhaps you're not aware," the Oracle said, "but being alone in a room with the unrepentant killer who, not two years ago, tried to murder me for no good reason can be a rather stressful experience."

"I had my reasons for everything I did."

"I never said that you didn't," the Oracle said, her voice perfectly even. "I said that they weren't good ones."

"Oooh," Callisto mocked, "Are we being overly literal now? I can play that game too. You said I was an unrepentant killer. Now, whoever said I was unrepentant?"

"Is that why you're here then?" The Oracle said. "To redeem yourself by helping those you wronged?"

"Isn't that a good enough reason for you?"

Now it was the Oracle's turn to arc an eyebrow at Callisto.

"It would be if I believed it were true," she said. "But that's not the real reason is it? Maybe you tell yourself it is, but you don't really give a damn about this city or what anyone in it thinks of you, do you?"

A slight smile tugged at one corner of Callisto's mouth.

"Guilty as charged," she said.

"Why do they trust you?"

The Oracle's question was unexpected and caught Callisto completely off guard.

"Who?" she said cautiously.

"You know who. Ithius, Athelis, even Adrasteia. They all seem to trust you. Why? What did someone like you ever do to earn such loyalty?"

Callisto shrugged. In all honesty, she was not really sure herself.

"You heard them," she said. "I saved their lives."

The Oracle shook her head.

"No," she said. "That's not it."

Callisto gritted her teeth in frustration.

"I've led people before," she growled. "I know how to inspire loyalty in people."

"How to inspire fear you mean," the Oracle corrected her, "but that's not what this is."

Callisto's teeth were grinding so hard against each other by now that her jaw muscles were beginning to ache.

"Well if you have all the answers, what. Is. It. Then?" she bit off each word sharply, her impatience with the Oracle's double speak growing with every passing moment.

"I don't know," the Oracle said, watching her carefully. "But neither do you apparently. So, we don't really know why your friends-"

"I don't have friends," Callisto snapped.

The Oracle paused, a slow smile spreading across her face.

"...Why your _friends_ believe in you," she continued, placing extra emphasis on the word, fuelling Callisto's annoyance all the more. "Nor do you appear to know why you're here, or even why you're doing any of this. That makes you adrift... alone..."

Callisto gritted her teeth, and stared off over the Oracle's shoulder. Something about what she was saying was familiar, like she had heard these words or others like them somewhere before, half remembered snatches out of a long forgotten dream. Why was she doing this? Elysium had been the reason, that promise made to her what seemed like an age ago now, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised she had barely even considered the deal she had made with Zeus in quite some time. So, again, why was she here? What did she have to gain anymore from any of this? Thoughts of her family drifted at the back of her mind, accompanied by the same bitterness and bile she had felt for so long now. They had a place in Elysium already, a paradise they had payed with their lives for. If Cronus was to be freed, all of that would be lost. She was not about to let that happen.

"I'm not adrift." she said, her voice flat and hard. "I know Demosthenes needs to be stopped; him and the Followers. They can't be allowed to do what it is they are trying to do."

"And what is that exactly?" the Oracle pushed. "Free a long dead Titan?"

Callisto's gaze snapped back to her in an instant.

"How did you know ab-" she began, but the Oracle made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

"Your friend Ithius told me," she said. "He seemed to believe it too. Not something I would have expected from a practical man like him."

"So do you believe it?"

"This Cronus business you all seem so wrapped up in?" The Oracle said, then gave a slight shrug. "Whether I believe it or not changes nothing. I am not the shaper of what's happening here. Nor have I never have been such. I'm simply a passenger, along for the ride in whatever wagon it is you're driving."

"Me!?" Callisto said, unable to hide her surprise. "You think I'm controlling all of this? Didn't you just say I was directionless? Adrift were your exact words I believe."

"Complete control is an illusion," the Oracle said. "I think you have the reins, yes, but did you choose the road that you're steering us all down? It should be fairly clear by now to the both of us that you didn't."

"Then what does any of this matter?" Callisto snapped in frustration. "Why I'm here... why the others are following me, or why we're even having this conversation... It's all just talk. Shouldn't it be enough for you that I'm here now, and trying to do the right thing for once in my life?"

"For the others, maybe," the Oracle said. "For you and me? No. Not even a little." She leaned forward intently in her chair. "It's conviction that will see you through this, Callisto. Much as we Oracles may like to pretend it is not so, the future is a ultimately a maleable thing. The fate of the world is not etched in stone. It can be changed by those of us with the steel, grit and determination to do so. I've seen so many people come through the doors of this temple, asking me to tell them their future. In the end however, I have learned that it's not the visions that matter. It is the person asking about them. They all come to me, and I look them in the eye, to see if they truly have the will within them to act on what I have seen and _make_ it come to pass. The day you came here to kill me I looked into your eyes. Then and there I knew you were one of those people and that for good or ill, you had it within you to make the future yours. I asked to be alone with you today because I wanted to see if that was still the case." She paused and shook her head. "Whatever I saw before, I'm afraid I just don't see it anymore."

Deep inside her, Callisto could feel her blood beginning to boil.

Grit?

 _GRIT!?_

"That's it?" she sneered, no longer able to contain her disgust with the other woman. "That's what you wanted? To see if deep down I was really some poor misunderstood girl? A little farmyard wench, chewed up and spat out by the world, but one with enough spirit in her to be the big, world-saving hero you all think you need right now?" She snorted in disgust. "So what am I missing then, hmmm?Is it conviction maybe? Or Selflessness? I find I'm fresh out of selflessness these days." She took a step forward, leaning in toward the Oracle in a way that would make almost anyone else pull back from her. To her credit, the Oracle held her ground.

"You want a hero," Callisto spat, "find yourself a Xena. Or a Hercules, or a Theseus, or any other legendary name you can pull out of a hat." She jabbed a finger at her own chest as she spoke. "I never asked to be made into the thing I am now. I never asked to be anyone's enemy, or anyone's champion, and I certainly didn't ask to be judged by the likes of _you!_ "

The Oracle gave a tired sigh, and rose from her seat, setting aside the goblet and moving over to tug on a small velvet rope that hung down one of the chamber's walls. In the distance, Callisto thought she heard a bell ring.

"All of that is as maybe," the Oracle said, "but like it or not, Callisto – and I can assure you, I do not – you are just about all the hero we have right now. There's no Xena riding to our rescue, or Hercules striding into town. There's no Theseus, or Perseus, or Odysseus, or are any other who may be able to save us in this, our time of need. You, much as I am loathe to say, are it, for better or worse."

"Definitely for worse," came a familiar voice from the door to the chamber.

Callisto turned so see that Barabus had slipped back into the room, apparently after the bell had rung, and was now standing at the rear of the room, arms folded disapprovingly.

"Great," she groaned sarcastically. "Just what I needed. Captain Anger-Management-Issues, back to ruin my day again."

"You summoned me, Lady Pythia," Barabus said tightly, ignoring her jibe yet at the same time never taking his eyes off her.

"Yes Captain," the Oracle said. "Our audience is finished. Callisto is to be treated as our guest," Barabus reaction was akin to being slapped. He stood glaring heatedly at the Oracle, his jaw working feverishly, but all the time saying nothing.

"Please show her to the same quarters as her friends," the Oracle continued. "And tomorrow morning you will provide her with whatever horses and supplies she needs to travel south and find this Spartan Captain Sentos that she and Ithius spoke of. He may make very little difference in the grand scheme of things, but with the threat we are facing, I'm willing to take any help we can lay our hands on." She glanced pointedly at Callisto. "Any help at all."

Barabus straightened to attention.

"I will follow your orders to the letter my Lady," he said stiffly. "No more, no less." He turned back to the door, gesturing for Callisto to go ahead of him.

Scowling at them both, Callisto turned and began to exit the room, her thoughts all a confused jumble after the Oracles words. It was only when she was out of the door that the Oracle called out to her a final time.

"One last thing," she said, causing Callisto to pause and turn back to face her. "Do not assume that because I am allowing you your freedom, it means I trust you. I don't. I do however trust the intentions of your companions. They at least, are good people, and whatever their reasons may be, they have seen fit to place their trust in you. Prove yourself worthy of it and perhaps – _perhaps –_ you may just be able to save us all."

Callisto did not reply. Instead, she simply turned her back on the Oracle, and stalked off down the corridor while Barabus closed the door behind her.

* * *

AUTHORS NOTE: Back again with the latest update. First of all, I am terribly sorry for the slowness of these updates recently. I've been having some personal issues to work through, but also, this proved to be an incredibly tough write for a chapter where not much happens. It was so difficult to get the conversation between Callisto and the Oracle 'right' (still not sure I did). Hopefully though, this is the last of the preamble chapters, and we should be able to move on to something a little more interesting now. Until I post again, hope you all enjoy, and thanks for reading.

EDIT: I tidied up some of the 'Callisto confronts the Oracle' stuff, adjusting dialogue and a descriptions a bit to make it read a little better and sort out some pretty nasty typos I missed. Nothing major. Just me being fastidious.


	9. Chapter Eight: By Wrath's Blade

**Chapter Eight: By Wrath's Blade**

The village of Arros had been like a gift from the gods for them.

That was the first thought Sentos had had when he and his troops had first arrived at its outskirts. It had been over a week since they had abandoned Demosthenes' army and struck out on their own, retreating from their diversionary battle at Tryxis before they could be crushed by their former king's superior numbers. Over the course of that week, they had been marching at double time in an attempt to keep ahead of the huge force hot on their heels, but even with all that effort, they had still ended up clashing repeatedly with Demosthenes' scouts. They had been victorious on each occasion, but the efforts of repeated battle and full days of forced marches with no real base camp from which to operate had begun to take their toll. Sentos had been able to see it in the bleary-eyed way that his men went about braking camp come sun up each morning, and in the gradual lessening of distance they would manage to cover each day. The worsening condition of their gear and supplies had become a concern too. Leather armour, once supple and polished was beginning to harden and crack from an inability to care for it properly, and their spears and shields were beginning to tarnish and dent after so many hard won fights. Food had also begun to run low, and on the fourth day, he had been forced to institute full rationing rather than the traditional field allowances that the Spartan army would normally operate on.

Arros had appeared at just the right time. It's people had been understandably nervous of Sentos and his troop of increasingly ragged troops arriving at the borders of their territory, especially given the rumours emanating out of the south. In the end however, the locals had eventually welcomed them when they had heard Sentos' tale. After all, what small farming village would not be grateful for the presence of a unit of defecting Spartans to protect it when a marauding army their ex-cromades could very well come sweeping through the region any day? They had given permission for Sentos' men to pitch their tents on the common at the centre of the village, and a few locals had even provided them with fresh supplies. Later that first night, the village head man had come to Sentos' tent in person, and asked if he might be willing to lead his men south the next day as scouts to see if Demosthenes' Spartans were indeed headed their way. Sentos would have preferred to linger a little longer, perhaps allowing his troops an extra half day's respite, but not wanting to appear ungrateful for the hospitality with which they had been met, he had agreed to the head man's proposal.

And so that morning they had set out south as requested, returning to the main road they had been shadowing for much of the past week and that they knew Demosthenes would be using to move his troops. Strangely they could find no sign of its passage. That had given Sentos pause. Demosthenes' forward march had been surprisingly aggressive for such a large force, only stymied slightly by Sentos' own nightly attacks on his scouts. After spending the last night camped in Arros, away from the road way and beyond the range of Demosthenes' scouts, Sentos had expected to have finally been passed by. The fact that they had not suggested Demosthenes had halted his own relentless momentum, but then the question was, for what reason? Unsettled, he had elected to return to Arros and report his findings.

It was on the return journey with th light of beginning to fade in the west, that they had first seen the smoke - several pillars of it in fact - thick and black and hanging ominously just above the horizon. Sentos had felt a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach at the sight of it. With no other settlements for miles around there was only one conclusion to be reached. Arros was aflame.

Ordering his men to quicken their pace, he had sent out two scouts of his own ahead of the main force. With so few men left to him he did not wish to risk their lives needlessly by marching blindly into whatever danger might await them.

Before too long, they had arrived just south of the village, and now his men were crouching in a ragged line, behind a low ridge that hid them from the eyes of whatever force was assaulting the village. A chill breeze blowing out of the north carried the scent of burning thatch with it, and Sentos gritted his teeth. Next to him, he heard the soft creak of leather as one of his few remaining officers, a young Spartan sergeant by the name of Pirikos, moved up beside him.

"How much longer do we have to wait?" the young man whispered.

"Until the scouts return," Sentos replied.

"At this rate if they take much longer all we'll end up doing is burying the bodies," was Pirkos' hissed response.

Sentos grimaced. Pirikos had the hot-headed nature of most young Spartans fresh to their shield and spear, but he also had a point.

"I won't lead us in there blind," he said tightly. "We don't know who's up there, what their capabilities are-"

"It's Demosthenes," Pirikos cut in. "It has to be."

Sentos fixed him with a hard look.

"Is it?" he said stonily, "Do we know that for a fact? Or are you just guessing? More to the point, are you willing to put our men's lives on the line to prove that guess?"

"Demosthenes is committing crimes against the honour of Sparta," the younger soldier was almost starting to sound petulant. "It is our duty to see that he not be allowed to continue!"

"As it is our duty to remain alive so that that honour is not forgotten. We march when I know what we are marching into, and not before. Is that clear Sergeant?"

Pirikos, flashed him a brief fiery glance, only to then acquiesce with a sigh and a nod. "Perfectly clear Captain."

As if on cue, the sound of three twigs snapping in quick succession sounded up on the ridge line. Giving a 'see' nod to Pirikos, Sentos leaned down and grasped a set of twigs he had prepared beforehand, snapping three in a pattern that echoed the one they had just heard. Immediately, a pair of Spartans came into view, ducking low to stay hidden as they crossed the ridge and slithered down its slope back to the unit kneeling at its base.

"Report," Sentos instructed them as they came up to him. "Is it Demosthenes?"

The first scout shook his head.

"No Captain," he said.

Sentos noted that his face was pale, and that both men looked visibly shaken. He shot Pirikos a sideways glance.

"Something else then?" he said, frowning.

"Some _thing_ is right," the second scout said. "Bandits, or at least I think they're bandits. I've never seen bandits do what these ones are doing though."

Next to him, Sentos could see Pirikos shifting his weight slightly.

"What do you mean?" the young sergeant asked.

"I mean when bandits raid towns and villages, they do it for a reason," the scout replied. "Plunder and loot, maybe even carry off a few slaves. Not these ones though. They're just... just..." he trailed off as he struggled to find the words.

"No need to explain now. We'll all find out soon enough." Sentos rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. "What's their approximate position in the village?"

One of the scouts stooped low, brushing aside leaves and taking up a stick to scrawl a rough outline of the village in the dirt.

"We know the village is built on the crossing between two cattle trails," he said, drawing a circle then carving it into quarters with two lines that bisected one another at the centre. "From the looks of things these bandits hit it from the north, and are rampaging up and down the main north-south thoroughfare." He drew a stretched elliptical circle around the line from north to south by way of illustration.

"So, they've spread themselves thin then?" Sentos said, and the scouts both nodded. "Perfect," he muttered, turning his attention back to the map and scrawling a half circle line around the perimeter of the village with his finger. "Thedras" he ordered, addressing one of the scouts by name. "I want you to go to Sergeant Hedron. Inform him that my orders are for him to take half the men and circle around the ridge until he reaches the woods to the north side of the village. He's to use them for cover to mask his approach but he is not to advance on the village immediately. Tell him to stay hidden. I'll lead the rest of our men in from the south. We'll push these bandits back up to him, and at my signal, he is to march on them from the rear as they attempt to retreat. Together and on open ground, we'll crush them between two phalanxes. Whatever crimes this scum are committing, we'll make them pay for it."

Thedras gave a grim nod, and slammed his fist to his heart by way of salute before turning and hurrying off to his men.

Sentos waited, for the sound of Hedron's men departing to fade before he gripped his spear and hefted his shield, gesturing down the line for the remaining Spartans to rise. There came a clattering of shields and spears as they obeyed, and in less than a minute, the well drilled forces were arranged in a small marching column.

"FORWAAARD!" Sentos announced loudly.

With the low rumble of hundreds of pairs of feet, the column began to move, slowly at first as they found their rhythm and crested the ridge but once they were moving down the other side and on toward the village they had reached steady pace. It was as they crested the ridge that Sentos felt his stomach tighten. Now he had a clear view of what was going on, he could see what had given his own scouts pause earlier. The bandits were indeed running rampant, with tight clusters of them were bunched up throughout the village, burning and slaying wherever they roamed. Chaos reigned, and everywhere the bandits went, villagers would scatter, only to be hunted down and murdered without remorse. A few of the locals seemed to be trying to mount somekind of resistance, but it was clearly a doomed affair, and one that could only result in greater suffering for those involved.

Most disturbing of all though, was what Sentos could spy out beyond the Northern edge of the village. There the land was open and without cover for nearly two hundred yards until it met the woodland Pirikos was currently using to mask his flanking maneuver. While the ridge line did not give Sentos the best view he could just make out the bandits at that part of the village dragging any sizeable lumber they could lay their hands on out onto the open ground where a few of their number had already begun to lash those pieces they had together into a series of t-shaped frames.

"Are those..." Began Pirikos next to him, but before the man could finish Sentos nodded grimly.

"Yes," he said simply. "They are." Gripping his spear tighter, he quickened his pace, causing the rest of the formation to match him. This savagery could not be allowed to continue any longer.

They entered the village from the south as planned, their formation tightening as they went. Almost immediately the bandits spotted them, and as soon as they did, they began to withdraw, falling back deeper into the village. A few were left behind: those too caught up in their own wanton bloodlust to completely realise what was happening until it was too late and Sentos' men were almost upon them. Those men fell quickly, but as for the rest...

Sentos could feel doubts beginning to churn in his guts as he watched the bandits fall back. He had been expecting them to either turn and fight, or scatter and flee. Instead, they were withdrawing in a disturbingly ordered fashion, close enough to tempt the Spartans onward, but just far enough away to be able to turn and mount a defence should their pursuers charge, and the deeper Sentos and his men continued into the village, the more uneasy he found himself becoming. Nothing about this felt right at all: the crucified villagers, the manner of the bandits' retreat. It all felt wrong, like all of this was being staged for their benefit.

Ahead of them, the bandits had just crossed the central village square, itself a large open stretch of churned dirt that loomed empty and suddenly silent. Frowning, Sentos raised his fist closed fist.

"HALT!"

A surprised murmur ran through the ranks of his men, but they were disciplined enough to do as they were told, drawing to a stop with a loud clattering the armour, spears and shields.

Sentos stood quietly among his men. In the distance he could hear the pained cries of the villagers where they were being rounded up and crucified. Other than that however, the rest of the village had fallen eerily silent.

"What's the matter?" Asked Pirikos next to him. "Shouldn't we proceed? Those villagers need our help."

Sentos looked at him.

"We go no further," he said. "Don't you feel it? The tension in the air? Something's waiting for us up ahead; a trap for us to spring, and those villagers are the bait to lure us into it."

Pirikos frowned.

"You're saying we should retreat?"

Sentos nodded.

"And right now." He turned to take in the men around him. "Everybody FALLBACK! Double time!"

At first there was no response.

"You heard the Captain!" Pirikos said loudly, adding his voice to Sentos'. "MOVE!"

Still doubtful, but not willing to disobey, the Spartans began to reform their column to march back the way they had come, but before they could even take a step, another column of soldiers appeared, cresting the same ridge they themselves had just crossed and starting down into the village. They were Spartans like Sentos' men, but clad in blue cloaks as opposed to Sentos' red. A stir of unease swept through his men like some ill breeze blowing off a battlefield. Sentos opened his mouth to give an order, but before he could speak, two more columns appeared, both similar in size and marching slightly behind and to either side of it. The trap they had been about to try and back out of had already been sprung.

"We're outnumbered," Sentos heard Pirikos say in dismay. "What do we do now?"

"The only way out is through," Sentos replied. "We stick to the original plan, only now we have to get it done faster. Spartans! About FACE!"

There was a deep rumble as the column shifted once more around him, and for a moment Sentos found himself wondering if that was the only cause for the rumbling or if the earth had actually just shifted a little beneath their feet, as if in quiet expectation of the bloodshed to come.

"FORWARD! MARCH!" He commanded, doing his best to put such grim thoughts out of his mind. Once again his men started forward only for Sentos to suddenly order them to a standstill once more when he found something quite unexpected waiting for them.

While he and his men had been distracted by the approaching columns of Demosthenes' men from the south, two more units of bandits had appeared, streaming out of where they had obviously been hiding in various side streets and neighbouring buildings to block off all the other exits from the square. More surprising, and worse still, was the single figure now standing apart from the rest of the bandits at the center of the square and directly in the path of his soldiers.

She was clad in studded, black leather battle gear, and had wild blonde hair only slightly kept in check by a pair of black braids at her temples. A sword handle jutted from over her right shoulder and a dagger hung at her hip. Far from being intimidated by the small army of Spartans bearing down on her, she was grinning widely, even stepping forward to meet them as Sentos brought them all to a halt.

"Welcome to our little party!" She announced as she gestured expansively to the wall of bandits behind her. "I do hope you like it. You are the guests of honour after all."

"Callisto?" Sentos growled in confusion as he made his way out to the front of the column to confront the grinning woman. "I don't understand. You were... I mean, how can you-"

"Be alive?" The blonde woman replied, her smile never faltering even as the rest of her expression turned ice cold.

Sentos nodded grimly.

"I'd heard you disappeared after the Ephors were killed. Most thought you were dead."

"But no one bothered to check, did they?" She gave tired sigh and shook her head. "When will you people ever learn? No corpse, no death, Sentos. I'm like the proverbial bad dinar. I always show up, usually at the very worst of times."

"So all of this..." Sentos said, looking at the village around them as he struggled to find the words. "...this butchery! This was your doing?"

"You _don't_ like it then," she pouted. "Such a shame."

"You supported us!" Sentos demanded, feeling his fury rising at her betrayal. "You were one of us! You wanted to save Leonidas!"

The woman's grin widened in amusement.

"One of you?" She said cocking her head and studying him carefully. "You honestly believed that, didn't you? You really did believe that I was ever on your side! Me, of all people?" She clapped her hands together and laughed. "Oh, this is just too delicious!" She took another step forward, her demented mirth turning quickly to ice.

"My loyalty can't be earned or bargained for, Sentos. It is to me, and me alone." Her eyes flicked to the soldiers at his back. "But what of your loyalty, hmm? Shouldn't you owe it to Demosthenes like the good little Spartans you all claim to be?"

"My loyalty is to Sparta," Sentos said straightening as he did so. "To its people and it's principles, not some megalomaniac who believes himself above them."

"Principles," the blonde woman replied with a dismissive sniff. "Your principles are dead. Demosthenes killed them." She reached up and drew her sword, holding it loosely at her side. "As for the people, well, they'll follow soon enough, but they need not fear." She lifted the weapon high. "They'll have you and your King waiting to greet them in Tartarus after all."

With that she let her sword drop like an executioner's axe, and a roar went up from the bandits as they surged forward at her signal.

"FORM UP!" Sentos bellowed, lifting his shield and stepping back to the line of his men, joining the formation as one of the first rank. "PIRIKOS! GIVE THE SIGNAL!"

A horn blast went up from somewhere to the rear of the formation, the signal for Hedron to close the flanking maneuver he had been sent on. Sentos only had a moment to feel a chill in his gut when there was no answering horn cry from Hedron's unit before the bandits were at their lines.

"Hold fast!" He growled at the men to either side of him, bracing behind his shield as he felt the first of their enemies press forward against him. Readying his spear, he rammed it forward through a small gap in the wall of shields and into the indiscriminate mass of enemies before him. He felt a moment of resistance, then heard a cry of pain, as the spear tip hammered through light leather armour and flesh alike. With a grunt he yanked the weapon back, feeling it pull free with a disgusting tearing sensation. Blood covered the head of it, and a good inch or so of the haft past that. Hefting the weapon once more, he took a step forward and thrust again. The result was much the same as the first time, and alongside him his soldiers were mirroring his actions. Each thrust from behind the shield wall would fell an attacker, and as one the whole the line would push grimly forward as their enemies gave way.

After the first couple of exchanges between the front ranks for the Spartans and bandits, the frontline of Spartans paused as the second line moved up to replace them, giving those at the front some much needed respite.

The old wound in his thigh from Thermopylae throbbing painfully, Sentos limped back off the line and deeper into the press of his men. He found Pirikos to the rear of the formation, trying to prepare a rear guard to meet the threat of Demosthenes' troops who were now only a hundred metres or so back down the village's main thoroughfare and advancing at a slow but an inexorable rate.

"There's still been no signal from Hedron," the young man said, wasting no time on formalities now that battle had been joined.

"I know," Sentos replied grimly. "Something's gone wrong."

"So we're on our own then?"

Sentos nodded, and Pirikos groaned.

"How are things at the front?"

"Going well," Sentos said. "We're gaining ground."

"Well that's something..." Pirikos began only to trail off when he saw Sentos shaking his head at him. "What?"

"It's Callisto," Sentos said. "She's smart. She knew Demosthenes' men were coming. We're gaining ground because she's giving it to us. She wants to lure us forward, keep us engaged so Demosthenes' men have time to move up and hit us in the rear. When they do, we'll be pushed forward into the centre of the village where our flanks will be exposed, and then she'll hit us with everything she has left."

"We can't stand against that of attack," Pirikos said, his face turning deathly pale.

Sentos shook his head in confirmation.

"No we can't."

"Then what do we do?"

"The only thing we can. We're going to have to break formation."

"But that's-"

"The only way an of us will get out of this alive," Sentos cut the younger man off sharply. "No arguments, Pirikos. This is battle is no grand sacrifice like Thermopylae There is nothing to be gained by us all dying here today. When I give the order, your men are to break formation, and scatter in whatever way they can. If they make it out they are to lay low and then make for Delphi however they can. Am I making myself perfectly clear?"

The younger man gritted his teeth but nodded.

"I will see to it that your orders are carried out sir," he said, snapping a fist to his chest in salute.

Sentos returned the gesture then turned and made his way back through the crowd of men toward the frontline again. It had advanced enough at this point that they were now being forced to step over the bodies of the bandits that they were felling. Moving as freely as he could through the crush of people, he passed out orders as he went, disseminating his plan down the chain of officers until he was reasonably certain that everyone had a good understanding of it. Back at the frontline finally, he stepped up into the second rank, laying aside his heavy bronze shield and spear, and drawing the short sword he carried at his side. Beside him the rest of the second rank did the same.

"SPARTANS READY!" He yelled as loud as he could, and he could practically feel the tension running through the crowd of troops as he did so. "...AND..." He lifted his sword. "...BREAK!"

As he gave the order, the front line stepped forward, thrusting with their spears and clearing a line along the front rank. Immediately after, each frontline soldier, stepped slightly to the side, allowing the now unburdened second rank to charge through the gaps, hacking and chopping with their swords as they went.

Immediately the discipline in the Spartan formation broke down as the previously orderly frontline scrum devolved into a crazed melee. Shields and spears were cast aside in the fury of close quarters fighting, and the coppery scent of spilled blood began to thicken in the air. In response, the lines of bandits trembled, their resolve wavering under the sudden fierce onslaught the Spartans had unleashed. Sentos had felled two bandits himself in less than a minute and was stepping up to meet his third when he heard the sound of barked orders from the bandit forces as the reserves that Callisto had previously been planning to flank them with charged into the maelstrom.

A large bandit moved to block Sento's path, a particularly wicked looking sword already stained with the blood of a previous victim clenched between his fingers. A dark sneer spread across the man's face.

"You're the lord high muckety-muck behind all of this aint'cha," he said, his voice barely above a guttural snarl as lowered his posture to charge Sentos. "If I take your head, I'm guessing the boss lady will reward me. Maybe even move me up in the rankings after all this is over."

Sentos did not reply, instead similarly dropping his sword low, ready to counter the man's attack.

The charge never came. Before the bandit had even gone a step, slim fingers tangled in his hair, yanking back his head to allow a slim bladed dagger to be raked across his throat. The man gargled as the blood flowed freely from the wound, and Callisto stepped around him, an annoyed expression on her face.

"Bad dog," she scolded, giving the bandit a shove as she passed him so that he keeled over sideways like a felled tree, his eyes already beginning to glaze over. "I thought I made it perfectly clear before we started this; no one is to spoil my fun."

Slipping the dagger - still bloodied – back into the small sheath that hung at her hip, the woman then raised the naked blade of her sword so the tip was pointed straight at Sentos. "And you, you're exactly my idea of a good time."

With a gleeful shriek, she dashed forward at him, little more than a blur of leather and steel as she twisted on her heel and brought her blade around in a flashing line of silver that would cleave him straight across the chest.

Sentos gritted his teeth and shifted his balance, twisting on his bad leg and doing his best to keep her in view so that he could counter the strike. Their swords scraped against one another and Callisto drew back for a brief instant, only to rush him down again before he had chance to shift his guard. Sentos grunted, barely able to get his sword around in time, and once again the two weapons sprayed sparks as they collided.

Callisto danced back out of range of a follow up strike and began to circle him.

"You're good!" she smiled wickedly at him. "Not as good as me of course, but then we were hardly expecting that were we?"

Sentos did not have time to reply. Again she surged in at him, and their swords rang loudly off one another. In those moments the chaos around them seemed to fade away and it was only her and himself, locked together in a desperate, frantic dance, then she retreated again and the world came rushing back in. His arms were aching, and the pain in his leg was so intense that it was making his jaw ache, so hard was he grinding his teeth together to keep from crying out. His heart was pounding fiercely in his chest, and the blood was roaring so loud in his ears he could barely hear the cries of the dead and the dying all about him.

He could see them though. All about the village square there were dozens of bodies. Some were dressed as bandits, but a disconcerting number were clad in the same crimson cape that he himself wore. There were his men, those bodies; the ones who had not made it away after his orders to scatter, or that had remained behind in order to give their comrades time to escape.

Around the many corpses, the battle still raged, but it would not do so for much longer. More Spartans had moved to join the fray, but these soldiers were wearing capes the shade of a spring sky, and they assaulted the few of Sentos' remaining troops with a ferocity that made the bandits' own look positively reserved in comparison.

Sentos had no more time to concern himself with the losses around him. A much more pressing battle was demanding his attention. Turning back to Callisto, he felt his heart beat faster still as fury at all that happened filled him up to bursting. Seeing the anger in him, the delighted smile she was wearing grew even wider, but somehow, it never seemed to touch her eyes. It was as if the mirth she outwardly showed was nothing more than a dead husk stretched taught across an empty, hollowed out vessel.

"You're starting to hate me, aren't you?" she said.

"Why?" was all Sentos could think to snarl back at her. "Why would you do this? Betray us this way?"

"Oh sweetie," Callisto taunted, still circling him with her sword low, but nevertheless ready to strike. "Haven't you figured it out yet? All of this..." she motioned at the battle around them and the crucified townsfolk beyond. "...it wasn't about you. It was _never_ about you."

Sentos had been taunted in battle before. It was not entirely uncommmon, truth be told, but something about the way Callisto spoke – the tone of her voice, the sheer amount of relish she seemed to be taking in goading him – was more than he could stand. With a bellow of pure fury, he launched himself at her, ignoring the shooting pain from his bad leg and hammering his blade down hard at her in an attempt to break through her first parry and end the duel with a single killing stroke. She was fast, it was true, but he still had the advantage of strength on his side.

Or so he thought.

As his blade met hers, she fell to one knee in the dirt, one hand clasped at the hilt, and the other pressed up against the flat of the blade toward it's tip. Suitably braced, she stopped his swing dead before it could ever reach her, then staring straight up at him as he pressed hard against her guard, she winked.

Before he could pull back, she slid her blade sideways along his with an ear piercing screech of steel on steel. The crossguard of her sword caught against the blade of his, dragging it to the side and throwing him off balance. As he stumbled, she released the hand she had pressed against the flat of her sword and grabbed for the dagger at her hip. So off balance was Sentos that he was completely unable to correct himself as she pivoted on one knee beneath him, rising and stepping behind him as the tip of his own sword plunged into the dirt. There was a sickening moment of stillness before the pain he knew was coming, then it hit him, like a red-hot surge of fire, as her dagger struck him in the back.

He fell forward, sprawling in the dirt and gasping for air as the blow from her dagger drove the wind out of him. Still gasping, he was barely able to push himself up onto all fours and crawl an inch or two before her boot struck him in the ribs, cracking two of them and sending a fresh wave of pain surging through him as the force of the kick flipped him onto his back. All the world seemed to be spinning except for her as she loomed above him. Her previous gleeful grin had now become a wicked leer and the dagger she had stabbed him with glistened wetly.

"You felt it, didn't you" she said, cocking her head and studying him carefully. "Just then, for a brief instant, you felt what it is that I feel all the time." Her gaze became unfocused, and her smile fell away. "Sometimes I wonder," she continued softly, "what it would be like to be able to put it all aside and know peace, real peace, even just a shred of it, if only for a moment." She shook her head as if shaking off a day dream and the dark smile returned. "All being well I'll know soon enough, and for a lot longer than a moment too, but before any of that can happen there's one last thing I need you to do for me." She squatted down over him, her face only inches from his own with teeth clenched together in a rictus snarl. "I really don't know what you Spartans believe happens after you die, but wherever it is you end up, you tell them Callisto sends her regards!"

With that she reared back, raising the dagger for a killing blow. Before she could deliver it however, a figure clad in a red cape and leather armour collided with her, knocking her back off him and landing atop her in the dirt in a mad tangle of thrashing limbs and flying mud.

Sentos felt another pair of hands gripping him by the shoulders and helping him to his feet.

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" Shouted the soldier that had just saved him. "I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I CAN HOLD HER!"

It was Pirikos!

Sentos tried to turn, to go back to help the younger man, but already he could feel the same hands that had lifted him tugging him off through what was left of the melee. The ever present pain from the old wound in his thigh was nothing compared to the fresh agony of the dagger wound in his back and the cracked ribs in his side. His feet stumbled clumsily in front of one another, barely able to resist as the soldier helping him did their best to drag him into a narrow side alley.

Before too long they had reached a ruined back doorway belonging to a house already ravaged in the earlier looting. Sentos could not recognise the man helping him. His helmet was a little too large, obscuring much of his features and the blood loss from the dagger wound was hardly helping, causing his vision to spin dizzyingly as they shuffled into the kitchen area of the house.

"...have to...go back..." he muttered weakly as the soldier eased him down behind a group of untouched grain barrels in the corner of the room. "...have to help...Pirikos." He tried to clamber back to his feet, but his legs no longer seemed willing to do as he bid them.

"And I will," said the soldier said evenly. "But you need to wait here."

"Like Tartarus I will!" Sentos snarled weakly, trying and again failing to rise to his feet. He felt strong hands press down on his shoulders.

"Captain, please, listen to me," the soldier implored him, and for a moment, Sentos almost thought he had heard a woman's voice rather than a man's. "You're the best of what's left of us. The last true Spartan in this whole sorry mess."

"Spartans don't run!" was all Sentos could hiss back as he struggled against the mans grip, a fresh feeling of strength surging through him as dark memories of Thermopylae and of King Leonidas ordering him away emerged from the fog of pain filling his mind. He tried to stand again, but the soldier held him firm, and as quickly as it had come, that renewed vigour drained away, leaving him to collapse back against the barrels breathing hard.

"Only fools don't run when the battle is lost," the soldier said, "especially when the war is still to be waged. A wise leader – a wise King – would realise that."

Sentos frowned in confusion.

"Who are you soldier?" he asked as the world began to darken around the edges.

"Nobody," the soldier replied. "Which is exactly how you should remember me."

The last thing Sentos saw before he blacked out was the soldier standing and heading back toward the door, reaching up to remove their helmet as they did so. Before he could see the features beneath however, the bliss of unconsciousness claimed him.

* * *

A cold, damp mist had settled over the Spartan army's camp the following morning. It hung thick and grey and still, swallowing up the usual hubbub that accompanied the soldiers' daily march preparations and leaving only eerily muffled clatterings and voices, along with the occasional figure that would appear from the fog and then vanish back into it as if they were some half-present spectre.

For Pelion, the unnatural stillness the fog brought with it was soothing. Recently, as his Lord's day of Return grew nearer, he had begun to feel increasing pressure within his own skull. When Great Cronus had first spoken with him, his voice had been little more than muted whisper, as if he were speaking softly through a thick brick wall. Now though, his Lord's voice sounded loud and clear in his head, and the sheer force of his presence was enough to make Pelion's mind throb in pain.

It was a pain he welcomed of course. For his Lord to be released, sacrifices had to be made, and his own discomfort was the least of those, but even a brief respite was nevertheless welcome.

Welcome as it was though, it would soon be over. He had finished his morning sermons early today at the command of Demosthenes and was now making his way across the camp, leaning heavily on his staff as he went to maintain that carefully cultivated air of frailty that had served him so well these last few years. Normally he would not entertain Demosthenes' pathetic attempts to exert control over him for even a moment, but today he was willing to make an exception.

The shade of Callisto that he had begun to affectionately refer to as Wrath was supposed to return this morning, and with her news of Sentos, the Spartan rebel that had so far managed to evade any attempts at capture and stymie the armies efforts to advance. Since Pelion was the one most directly responsible for her creation – excluding Callisto herself of course – it was only natural that any successes she may have should also be claimed by him. Also, her manner of infuriating Demosthenes and Mortius never ceased to entertain him, and he would not miss their confrontations for the world.

It didn't take much longer for him to reach the large but relatively unassuming tent that belonged to Demosthenes. Inside he could already hear voices, one of them raised in anger, the other cold and dry. Demosthenes and Mortius.

Pelion was about to sweep inside as theatrically as he could manage when a pulse of pain shot through the centre of his mind.

" _Caution my Faith."_ The strong hard voice of his Lord drowned out his thoughts and seemed to fill every inch of him from the peak of his skull down to the tips of his toes. _"You should not display your confidence too readily. Our time of victory is almost at hand, but there is still room for failure. Do not push them too far. Demosthenes is a simple minded fool, but one that is still necessary for our goals, and as for Mortius; he begins to doubt. It was inevitable really, but remember why we need him. Without him, this will all come to nothing."_

Pelion did his best not to grimace at the pain, but nodded nevertheless. He could understand his Lord's apprehension. They had come so far, but even this close to the end, there was still much that had to be done. Slumping his shoulders, and leaning even more heavily on his staff, he pushed aside the tent flap and made his way inside.

Demosthenes' tent was warmer in than out and still lit by candles despite the daylight outside. At its centre, the Spartan King was pacing back and forth, clearly irritated and whenever he passed a set of candles his shadow would drag behind him, jittering off the nearby tent canvas. Mortius was standing off to one side as he so often did, as usual cloaked in dark robes and shadows both blacker than pitch. When Demosthenes' shadow drew close to him, it seemed almost to be tugged between its two masters, dancing madly until Demosthenes moved further away, at which it once again became more naturally still.

"...treating us like fools!" the Spartan King was in the middle of saying as Pelion entered. Demosthenes turned at the rustling sound made by the old priest and his mouth tightened. His eyes seemed even more red and puffy than usual. Last night must have been heavy on the Pneuma usage. Indeed, Pelion realised, he could still smell it in the air of the tent.

"On time for once?" Demosthenes growled. "That's unlike you."

Pelion simply dipped his head obsequiously.

"I am ever the servant," he said evenly. "You requested my presence and so here I am."

"To gloat no doubt," Was Demosthenes' bitter reply. "Well sorry to disappoint you, but your pet monster isn't here."

Pelion frowned. This was not what he had expected.

"Not here?" he said. "But she was supposed to return an hour ago."

"Punctuality, it would seem, is neither of your strong suits," Mortius remarked dryly.

"Perhaps she has simply been waylaid," Pelion said, doing his best not to seem overly concerned.

"Waylaid," Demosthenes snorted disgustedly. "More likely she got herself ambushed the same as all the rest." He pointed an accusing finger at Pelion. "If she has walked into a trap I will be holding you responsible. Remember that she has my men with her, and that she is your plaything!"

Pelion rolled his eyes. How many times did they have to have this conversation. Was Demosthenes really so thick headed that he was unable to grasp that the only purpose his men served was to die in the service of achieving Cronus' freedom?

He was opening his mouth to reply but before he could do so, the sound of surprised shouts, followed by the pounding of dozens of sets of hooves filled the air outside. Pelion could feel Demosthenes' heated gaze on him, and rather than say anything in response, he simply shot the Spartan King a triumphant smile. Demosthenes grunted, grabbed his helmet from a nearby armour stand, and stalked past him out of the tent. Pelion shot Mortius a glance to see if he was as infuriated as his compatriot, but cloaked and hooded as he always was, he remained as outwardly unreadable as ever.

Without a word the two of them followed after Demosthenes, exiting the tent just in time to see a loose formation of horse riders come galloping down one of the main camp thoroughfares with Wrath riding at their front. Mortius strode pas Demosthenes and out to meet them in the middle of the trail, seemingly unintimidated by the wall of horses bearing down on him. They were coming at such speed Pelion almost thought they were about to ride right over him when, at the last moment, Wrath reared her horse, drawing it up just short of the king. The rest of the men riding with her – her own bandit gang – had brought their horses to a stop a moment or two before and their horses were now circling agitatedly as their riders tried to bring them under control.

"Your late," was all Mortius said as Wrath dismounted. Despite him being over a head taller than her, she seemed as unfazed by him as he had been by the charging horses.

"Oh, I really am so terribly sorry," she said, not sounding in the least bit apologetic. She turned and moved to the back of her horse where a large burlap sack had been tied to the saddle. "But what can I say, my men wanted to celebrate, and after a job well done..." as she spoke she tugged on a draw string at the base of the sack, causing the weight of it's contents force the sack open and spill out onto the ground close to ten red crested Spartan helmets. "...I saw no reason to deny them anything."

Demosthenes' lip twitched in a sneer and Pelion watched as the Spartan King walked out to the pile of helmets. Stooping, he lifted one, barely even reacting when the head of its previous owner came tumbling out onto dirt. Looking more closely, Pelion realised that all the helmets she had brought seemed to have been collected alongside their owners' heads. His head began to pound again, as he felt the presence of his Lord once more.

" _Glorious is she not?"_ his Lord's voice boomed inside his skull. _"I see now why my son chose her as his champion. She is a weapon like no other; a true artist of destruction and chaos!"_ Pelion was forced to agree. He was used to witnessing savagery, had even conducted some himself, but it had always been in service of his cause. To see Wrath's gleeful brutality was never less than impressive, no matter how many times he witnessed it.

Demosthenes dropped the first helmet to the ground, and moved to inspect the rest.

"I recognise these men," he said, still looking from one head to the next. "These are Sentos' lieutenants,"

"That they are," grinned Wrath, from where she had begun to lean nonchalantly against her horse's flanks. The snorted and shifted slightly as she did so but a glare and sharp tug on its reigns from her stilled its protests.

"But no Sentos," Demosthenes said, looking back up at her. "Your mission..."

"Was what?" Wrath interrupted smoothly. "Let us not forget, there was no mission. I volunteered my services, remember? I told you your problem was now mine." She shrugged. "Problem solved."

Demosthenes took an angry step forward.

"Except it isn't!" he snarled. "Sentos has become a figurehead! A symbol of Leonidas' sacrifice, and of resistance to my new order. While he is alive he is a threat! I needed him dead, not crippled!"

"Crippled is better than martyred," Wrath replied evenly. "And what _you_ need is of absolutely no concern to me."

"Then what is that you need," Mortius said, stepping up beside Demosthenes.

"I already told you, to make sure my message is sent." She walked back up to face them both. "And I'm not done yet either. I may have just destroyed my alter ego and her cronies' best hope against you, but they still have one other final hope to cling to."

"And that would be what exactly?" snarled Demosthenes.

"Isn't it obvious?" Wrath said, shooting him a glance that suggested she thought she was talking to a particularly dense individual. "Each other of course?"

"You plan to try and drive them apart?" Mortius said, his tone as flat and emotionless as ever.

Wrath nodded.

"Uh huh."

"And I imagine you'll be needing my men for this little scheme of yours?" This question from Demosthenes.

Wrath nodded again.

"But of course," she said. "And not just yours either." She turned to Pelion for the first time since her arrival. "Tell me something. How loyal are these 'Followers' of yours? How far would they go for what they believe in?"

Pelion straightened proudly.

"As far need be and more," he said without even a hint of doubt.

A sly grin lit up lit up Wrath's face.

"Really?" she smiled. "So if I ordered them to die, they'd do it?"

"Without question."

Wrath's smile widened.

"Oh Pelion, you wonderful crusty old man, what you said just then..." The wide grin turned ever more sadistic and gleeful "...music to my ears!"

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm alive! I really am so very very sorry to everyone who still reads these things that this has taken so long! Since August last year (the last update) I've been having a lot of personal issues and am now trying to change tack with my life somewhat. Fortunately, a side effect of this is that I am making a more conscious effort to devote more time to writing, so hopefully there should not be such a big gap again. Another benefit is that I've had a lot of time to think over the last 8-9 months about the potential pitfalls of where I was taking this story and have been able to adjust an tweak a lot so that it should all become a much more cohesive piece than had I just continued to plough on through it last year.

Anyway, again I am truly sorry for how long this has taken, and I hope you all enjoy.

EDIT: Changed the end of the chapter to read better and to better set up something that's coming up in a future chapter.


	10. Chapter Nine: Departures

**Chapter Nine: Departures**

The Temple of Apollo's courtyard was an unexpected hive of activity as Callisto emerged, bleary eyed and somewhat unkempt into the dull, grey morning air. From the moisture on the cobbles she could tell there had probably been a mist hanging over the city through the night, and maybe even into the early hours of daylight. It was gone now however, chased away by the first hints of sunlight beginning to break through the heavy clouds over head.

With a wide yawn, she arched her back and stretched her arms out taught in front of her until she heard vertebrae and knuckles give a series of satisfying pops. Some of the kinks thus worked out, she began to make her way down the temple steps, drawing many suspicious and hate-filled glances as she went. She did her best to ignore them but found it harder than usual, and she was not entirely sure why. It had been happening more and more often recently she had noticed; this increasing inability to shrug of that which would have before been as water off a duck's back to her. She had especially noted it the day before when confronted by Barabus, and to an even greater degree during her audience with the Oracle. In the past, their words would have meant nothing to her, but now the old armour she had cultivated since the burning of Cirra was not quite so impervious as it had once been, leaving her more vulnerable than she cared to admit, and allowing them both to hook barbs into her that she could not so easily dismiss. The rumours of her involvement in the burning of villages to the south had not helped matters, and despite the obvious impossibility of the claims that had been made, she could not shake a strange sensation of ice cold fingers running down her spine every time she thought about it. Despite all of this however, she still had a particular image to maintain. Her reputation was the single best defence remaining to her, and while her confidence might have taken something of a pounding over the last several days, she could not allow anyone else to see the cracks in the façade that were beginning to form.

Adopting her best devil-may-care strut, she sauntered across the courtyard to where she could see Ithius standing and talking with Adrasteia, all the while trying to work out exactly why there was so much activity around them. All about the courtyard, servants of the temple moved this way and that, carrying bags of provisions and leading horses. A large number of the Delphi City Guard were present too, in many cases readying the horses and provisions after the servants had delivered them. Most of them were carrying weapons, armour, and camping gear with them, and in most cases were busying themselves with securing their kit to the harnesses of their mounts, as if they were preparing for an extended patrol out in the wild country beyond the city walls.

"Morning," Ithius offered in greeting as Callisto drew within earshot. Adrasteia turned and nodded too. Callisto immediately noticed the girl's red rimmed eyes, and exhausted expression suggesting that she had been crying the night before and had not slept well.

"Morning to you too," she nodded to Ithius before turning her attention to Adrasteia and grinning widely. "And what is it that's got you so restless today? Were you crying yourself to sleep because you're worried I've been up all night having my wicked way with your dear brother?"

Adrasteia's expression darkened but she did not take the bait. Instead she just sighed and turned back to Ithius causing Callisto's grin to widen even further. She did so love to watch Athelis' holier-than-thou little sister squirm.

"Anyway," She continued on, now to no one in particular as she looked about her at the hubub and her grin turned to a confused frown, "this is unexpected. Have you got any idea who all these people are?"

Ithius shook his head.

"Your guess is as good as mine, although I'd lay dinars on it being something to do with us."

"You'd win the bet too," came a fresh voice that cut into their conversation before Callisto could reply. The three of them turned to see Barabus himself emerging from the crowd of people.

"What are you doing here?" Callisto grunted. She had a feeling that she already knew, but was hoping against hope that that feeling was wrong.

"My duty," came Barabus' simple reply.

"Your duty was to give us what we need to ride out and find Sentos," Callisto argued. "Your precious Oracle said as much."

"But she never stated that it would be _you_ who got to determine what those 'needs' would be."

"So you took it on yourself to decide instead?" Callisto said arching an eyebrow at him in barely disguised contempt. "You think we need this? A patrol of City Guard large enough to take on a small village? Has no one ever explained to you the meaning of the words 'low profile'?"

"Low profile?" Barabus' lip curled up in a disgusted sneer as he looked her up and down. " _You're_ going to try and tell _me_ how to keep a low profile?"

"She has a point," Ithius interjected in as calming a fashion as he could manage. "Sentos is almost undoubtedly around the coast to the South East of here, but Demosthenes and his army are somewhere out that way too, and are doubtless coming this way. Time is of the essence here. A smaller group would be able to move faster, make contact with Sentos quicker, and stand a better chance of doing it all without drawing Demosthenes' attention in the process. Sending a force this size south would make all of that much more difficult."

As Ithius spoke, a look of dark amusement began to spread across Barabus' face. Callisto could only roll her eyes in response.

"Oh, just don't waste your breath," she said to Ithius. "He doesn't need an explanation. He's not stupid after all, and I'm sure he's already given some thought to everything you just told him." She took a step toward Barabus, her hard stare meeting his. "But in the end, he's decided none of those things matter because, really, they aren't related to why he's doing this."

"So why is he doing it then?" Adrasteia asked looking confusedly between them.

"Isn't it obvious?" Barabus replied. Despite the smug, self-satisfied expression on his face, his voice was hard and cold.

"He's doing it because of me," Callisto said.

"You're kidding right?" Adrasteia sounded surprised, and then suddenly more earnest when no one immediately reassured. "I mean you have to be? Right?"

Callisto found herself wondering if the girl's apparent naivety was simply an act, or if she really was just that clueless as the girl turned to stare at Barabus with new found understanding.

"You'd risk this city's best chance at safety," she said, her voice now genuinely stunned, "it's best chance of survival, by draining it of half the Guard and then sending them into the lion's den, just to spite her?" She gave a single nod in the direction of Callisto.

Barabus shot the younger woman an angry look.

"This isn't to spite anyone," he hissed. "You might think Demosthenes and his army are the biggest threat we face, but Callisto is just as dangerous; maybe even more so. We had her in our grasp once before and we let her slip through our fingers. Look at the damage that caused; the loss, the pain, the destruction and the deaths. I will not allow that to happen again. Ever. Not while it is within my power to prevent it."

He turned his attention back to Callisto and Ithius.

"My orders were to see to it that you have everything you need to make contact with this Sentos and his rogue Spartans. That I've done. You have supplies, horses-"

"An escort," Callisto cut in and Barabus smiled dryly.

"There's a reason I'm the commander of the Guard," he said. "Can you guess what it is?"

"The fact that you're a petty, anal retentive?"

Barabus' smile faltered only slightly at the jab.

"I prefer to think of it as my ability to provide peace of mind," he said. "I leave nothing to chance."

"Like letting a known mass murderer wander the country side without a leash?" Callisto offered sarcastically.

Barabus nodded.

"Precisely."

"And if, for your 'peace of mind', we all end up dead?" This from Ithius.

"Then at least I'll die safe in the knowledge that she'll be heading to Tartarus alongside me."

Callisto gave a sigh and folded her arms across her chest.

"So I take that to mean you're coming along too?"

Barabus did not reply, instead just smiling as he backed away from them, before turning on his heel and making his way off into the crowd of people once more.

* * *

It was less than a quarter hour later that Callisto was readying a mount that had been granted to her by one of temple's stable hands. It was one of a long line of similar animals, each secured to a long hitching rail and being tended to by their individual riders. This particular horse was a large but somewhat unkempt looking dark brown stallion that seemed relatively passive when compared to some others she had ridden. The animal was chewing on feed from a trough, casting her only the most cursory of backward glances and twitching its tail as she slung her saddle across its back and began to fasten its harness.

She was in the middle of tightening the harness straps when she felt eyes on her back. At first, she thought it was just some local Delphian, probably watching her warily as she worked, but after a little time had passed she began to recognise the familiar presence of the person behind her.

"You're not coming along?" She said without turning around.

"Even if I did, do you honestly think I could make a difference out there?" It was Adrasteia who spoke.

Callisto turned and regarded her coolly. The girl was standing a couple of strides away, arms folded in apparent annoyance, but her expression did not match the rest of her body language. She looked pensive and uncomfortable.

"Not really," Callisto said. "But I thought you might still be wanting to keep an eye on me."

Adrasteia frowned.

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, it's hardly like you trust me."

"Themistocles said I should be careful who I trust. I'm pretty sure he was including you in that statement."

"Especially me I'd wager," said with a nod. "A smart man." Adrasteia cocked her head slightly in surprise and Callisto frowned. "Did I say something wrong?"

"It's just I never thought I'd hear you do that," Adrasteia said. "Pay someone a compliment I mean."

"There are precious few who deserve them." Callisto turned back to tightening straps. "So, if you're not coming along what do you plan to do here? Go back to being just another of your Oracle's hand maidens? Just another glorified fetcher and carrier?"

"I think I can be a little more use than that."

"Only a little?" Callisto replied casting a backward glance and an arched eyebrow at her. Adrasteia chose to ignore the slight instead taking a conspiratorial step forward.

"I have the book," she said softly. "The one Ithius brought to the city that belonged to your friend Monocles."

Callisto stared at her steadily.

"And?" She said, hardly impressed.

"Well it's important isn't it?" Adrasteia replied, looking somewhat put out. "I mean, it may have even cost Monocles his life. If we can find a complete copy-"

"We might be able to find out what it is they were trying to hide from us when they killed Monocles." Callisto nodded, completely unimpressed. "I had this talk with Ithius already."

"But you don't think it's important?"

"Did I say that?"

"You certainly made it sound that way."

Callisto rolled her eyes.

"Do I look like a librarian to you?" She said, barely able to keep the exasperation out of her voice. "I wasn't the one poking around libraries and dusty city archives with Monocles when he found it the first time. He did that on his own. Maybe the book is important, maybe it isn't, I don't know. What I do know is that in a war you concentrate on the most achievable and relevant tasks first. Finding that book isn't going to keep Demosthenes' men from breaking into this city when they finally get here and stopping that from happening is what I'm most concerned with right now. If you want to go sniffing around in search of another copy, I say have at it. At the very least it will keep you out from under foot and keep me from having to rescue you again like I did at Tryxis." She turned away from her mount once more. "Now is that it? Are we done? I don't know if you realise but we are on something of a schedule here and we're already burning daylight."

Adrasteia stiffened slightly but held her ground nevertheless.

"There is something else," she said, placing her hands on her hips as she did so. "It's about my brother."

"Your brother?" Callisto replied, glancing briefly down the row of horses to the end where Athelis was already finishing up his own preparations like Callisto would have been by now if she was not being consistently disturbed. "Why am I not surpised?"

"I don't want him to go with you again," Adrasteia said firmly. "Not this time."

Callisto's top lip curled back in a sneer.

"Touching," she said. "Really it is, seeing you worry about him so and trying to protect him from my bad influence, but I've got news for you Adrasteia; Athelis is a big boy now. He can come and go as he pleases. If he chooses to come with me-"

"Then that's his choice," Adrasteia nodded. "You're right of course, and if that really is what he wants then I'll certainly respect it, but I worry that it's not his choice. Not really."

Callisto's sneer fell away and instead she frowned at the other woman again, somewhat confused.

"Why wouldn't it be his choice?" She said. "No one's forcing him to come with me."

"Did anyone force you to do the things you did?" Adrasteia answered. "I'm fairly certain they didn't. Afterall, who could force you to do anything?"

Callisto grinned slightly at that but said nothing.

"But I'm also fairly certain," Adrasteia continued, "that if I were to ask you why you did those things I'd get the same answer he would give me. That you didn't have a choice, that you didn't choose to become what it was you became, and that it was someone else who made you that way."

She paused and looked down at her feet, shuffling uncomfortably as she did so. When she looked back up again something had changed about her. There was no longer the fierce and intense dislike for Callisto behind her eyes that Callisto normally noticed. Instead, Adrasteia just looked sad; sad and more than a little tired.

"He won't listen to me," she continued. "Me or anyone else. He doesn't think we understand him or that we know the kind of pain he's in. Perhaps he's right, and we don't." She paused as if what she were about to say was taking a great deal of effort for her to admit. "You do, though."

"And what if I don't think he's wrong to want the things he does?" Callisto said darkly. "What if I think he's more than justified in wanting to track down Pelion and end him?"

"But you don't think that, do you?" Adrasteia said. "Not anymore. You know better than anyone else that no good can come from this mission of his; that he'll lose himself to it one way or the other." She lowered her gaze once more and this time she did not look back up. "Maybe you don't understand this, but he's the only family I have left. I know he thinks he lost everything, but I'm asking you now to help me show him that he didn't."

Callisto did not know what to say. Adrasteia did not understand. That much was obvious, and how could she? Yes, she had lost people in her life, people she was close to no doubt, but she had not had them taken from her the way Athelis had, the way Callisto herself had. She could not comprehend the pain of that, and yet, at the same time...

She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat suddenly felt dry, and before she could say anything, a loud gong strike rang out across the temple courtyard; the signal that it was time for the troops to move out. The echoing sound snapped her out of her sudden introspection, and she felt a small spark of anger in her gut at the other woman. No, Adrasteia did not, and could not understand, and that was the end of it. Grabbing her horse's reins, she fixed her jaw and glared defiantly back at the younger woman.

"His choices are his own," she said, her voice cold and hard. "Now it's time for me to leave."

Adrasteia stared at her, her mouth a tightening to a thin, pale line as that anger Callisto was so familiar with ignited behind her eyes again.

"So I was wrong then," she said with a disappointed nod. "That's sad. I was hoping that I wasn't."

With that, she turned and stalked off across the courtyard leaving Callisto standing next to her horse. The animal gave a snort and tossed its head, prompting a her to give a vicious tug on the reins.

"Don't you start," she snarled at it, as she swung herself up into the saddle, and began to trot across the stone courtyard to meet with the rest of the gathering Delphians. Athelis was already there, astride his own mount, and next to Ithius.

She felt a strange churning feeling in her gut as the approached them. Had Adrasteia been wrong? The girl was right about Athelis' little vendetta, that much was true. That there was no peace to be found in vengeance was a hard lesson she had learned way too late. What she was less certain of however, was whether or not she actually thought that made it worth him turning his back on it. Was Athelis still salvageable? Or was he already as far gone as she herself, and more importantly, why did she even care?

"What was all that about?" Ithius asked as she rode up to them, nodding toward Adrasteia's departing figure.

"Oh, nothing much." Callisto said, doing her best to adopt her usual uncaring attitude, but still feeling the gnawing doubts that Athelis' sister had instilled in her. "She just wanted to give me a bit of encouragement, you know. Pep me up a bit before the journey."

From the front of the gathered troops, Barabus gave a barked command for the unit to move out, and so they did, each member of the group guiding their horses into two parallel riding columns. Callisto found herself riding behind Ithius and with Athelis immediately on her right.

"Really?" he said with a disbelieving frown. "My sister did that?"

"Oh yes," Callisto nodded barely able to keep the sudden amusement she was feeling out of her voice. She had made a decision as they had begun to ride, and when she had, that small curdling feeling of guilt in her stomach had disappeared almost immediately. "Picked me right up too. Quite the inspirational speak when she wants to be, isn't she?"

Athelis gave a snort of wry amusement.

"Teia?" she said. "Hardly. She used to scold me worse than father did. She always had this way of speaking that made me feel about two inches tall-"

Callisto nodded along as he spoke, surreptitiously slipping the dagger she had at her waist out from its sheath, then suddenly bending low over her horse's flank. Before Athelis could respond, she had lashed out with the dagger and cut the harness on his mount. With a surprised cry, the former mercenary toppled sideways onto the courtyard cobbles as his saddle tipped from the horse's back. A ripple of laughter went up from the column at the sight of his fall, but Athelis apparently did not see the funny side. He was on his feet almost immediately, his face flushed with anger, and his eyes blazing hot.

"Callisto!" he shouted after her, scrabbling to grab his saddle up from the cobbles and jogging to try to catch back up to his horse which had wandered clear of the rest of the riders and was now standing a few yards away, somewhat bewildered at having lost its rider. "You can't do this to me!"

"Just you try and stop me," Callisto snarled twisting in her saddle. "This mission is important Athelis. Too important to let you and your vendetta get in the way of it."

"You can't keep me from coming with you!" he shouted back. "I'll follow along behind if I have to, but I am coming!"

"No," Callisto repeated, shaking her head as she did so. "You're not." She raised her voice as the distance between them began to increase. "And, trust me, if I catch you even trying to follow us, I'll do far worse than cut your horse's harness!"

With that, the column passed beyond the temple courtyard and out into the early morning city streets. Callisto turned in her saddle and fixed her eyes on the road ahead. The last she saw of Athelis was him standing, impotent and fuming in the middle of the courtyard beside his mount, clutching tightly to his broken saddle.

"You know," Ithius said, slowing the pace of his own mount so that it could fall into step beside hers. "You could've at least _tried_ to persuade him to stay behind."

"Why bother?" Callisto said. "It wouldn't have worked, and we both know it."

"Maybe," Ithius nodded. "But did people forbidding _you_ from doing anything ever stop you from doing it?"

Callisto did not reply. Instead she gritted her teeth in annoyance as they rode on through the city toward its southernmost gate.

* * *

It was not long after Callisto and the others had departed that Adrasteia found herself standing before the Library of Delphi. After leaving the courtyard she had returned to her room in the temple to retrieve the book Ithius had handed over to her the day before. Not wanting to waste any more time, she had stuffed it into a small shoulder satchel and proceeded on her way, all the while stewing over Callisto's unhelpfulness.

Callisto did nothing but confound Adrasteia. On the one hand there were the visions of her, manic and marching at the head of an army that plagued Adrasteia every time she tried to sleep. On the other hand, there was Ithius' belief that she was actually some kind of chosen champion of the gods, and it was the apparent contradiction in those two ideas of the woman Callisto actually seemed to be that were causing Adrasteia so much frustration. No matter how she approached her, Adrasteia just could not seem to get any kind of handle on how Callisto would react at any given time. Most of the time she seemed so gleeful and wicked, delighting in whatever pain and discomfort she could cause those around her. Then there were the other times where, despite her best efforts, she could just seem so much more human than she had any right to. Was that the reason that in her visions of Callisto, the woman's face never quite seemed right, seeming to shift and flicker between personas as if even the vision itself could not quite determine the nature of the woman it was showing her. Were the two versions of her separate and distinct, or were they in fact one and the same?

Adrasteia was pondering this when she finally turned a street corner and emerged into a small square with a statue of some ancient orator at its centre and the entrance to the Library of Delphi just beyond. The Library itself was not a small building, but nor was it an ostentatious one. It squatted, long and wide, flanked on either side by a number of the city's other administrative buildings that also opened out onto the cobbled square Adrasteia was standing in. Where the admin buildings were all of a piece with one another, white and regal looking, the library was like some kind of great stone slab whose bleak grey lines were only occasionally broken by windows barred with iron, so as to keep potential intruders from getting inside any other way than the main double doors or the smaller service entrance toward the rear of the building.

Taking a deep breath, Adrasteia stepped forward, pushing those heavy double doors open and making her way inside, somewhat surprised that they opened at all. Considering how early in the morning it was she had half expected them to still be locked. The entryway was a simple open hall with a sunburst pattern etched into the floor tiles indicating the city's loyalty to Appollo. Somewhat ironically, the entry hall was heavy with gloom, the only daylight filtering in from two pairs of windows to either side of the main doors. Moats of dust swam languidly in the shafts of light. A small desk was situated opposite the main entrance with doors that lead deeper into the library halls beyond situated to either side of it. The desk itself was attended to by a matronly woman with her hair tied up and a bad squint, presumably brought on by the strain of having to make out the tiny print in the heavy, leather bound ledger that open in front of her and that she was currently scratching something into with a white feather quill. Before Adrasteia could make her presence felt herself, the big double doors swung shut behind her with a loud clunking of wood on wood. The woman's head jerked up at the sound, her eyes narrowing even further as she peered through the gloom and tried to make out Adrasteia.

"Why hello there deary!" She said after a moment, her eyes widening delightedly while her tone was all warmth and welcome as she stood to greet Adrasteia. "Is there anything I can help you with this morning?"

Adrasteia paused for a moment, glancing at the chamber all about her.

"I... um... I was just wondering, are you actually open?"

"Oh but of course!" The woman replied, sliding her sizeable frame out from behind the desk and making her way over to Adrasteia, chattering cheerily away as she did so. "I'll admit we don't usually get people here so early, and that's how I like it really, what with the records needing to be updated so often, and everything else, but that's not to say you're not welcome. No not at all. Far from it in fact. After all, what good's keeping all these books and scrolls cooped up in here if no one ever comes to read them, eh?"

She smiled broadly, and for a moment Adrasteia felt the sour mood she had been in since her conversation with Callisto beginning to lift slightly.

"I'm actually only looking to find one book," she said, unslinging the satchel she was carrying. "and a very specific one at that." She pulled the old tome from the bag and handed it to the older woman. "You wouldn't happen to know if the library has another copy of this would you?"

The woman frowned a little as she took the book from Adrasteia, turning it over in her hands so that she could inspect it more carefully.

" _'Meditations on Divinity, Aether, and the Nature of Being',_ " she said, studying the title carefully. "Hardly light reading."

"Do you know it?" Adrasteia asked, doing her best to sound casual.

The woman's frown deepened.

"I recognise the author. Androsius if I'm not mistaken. A minor philosopher at best. A few published works all pretty much reiterating the same points over and over again. He had a bit of an obsession with the nature of religion, and what the Titanomachy represented as a part of our beliefs. I tried reading one or two of them in my younger days, but he's rather dry and I never really found any of them that interesting or insightful. Trust me my dear, there's other authors much worthier of your time."

She passed the book back without opening it, much to Adrasteia's relief. She had not wanted to have to explain the bloodstains within.

"Oh, I just think some of the subjects he raises are worthy of a little further study is all," she said, tucking the text back into its satchel.

"To each their own I guess," the other woman said with a shrug. "But if you don't mind my asking, why are you looking for another copy of this book? I mean, you already have this one don't you? We do have some of his other books if you'd like to take a look at them."

Adrasteia shook her head.

"Sorry but it's this particular book I'm looking for. This copy was damaged you see. A chapter is missing, and it's the chapter I'm actually most interested in."

The made her way back over to the desk and began unraveling several cracked and yellowing scrolls, her finger tracing down a list of what Adrasteia assumed to be titles as she followed after her. After several minutes, the woman turned her attention back to Adrasteia with an apologetic look on her face.

"I'm sorry deary, but it appears that we don't have it on record."

Adrasteia folded her arms and frowned.

"Not on record?" She said. "That doesn't sound like you don't actually have it."

"Well, that's the rub you see," the woman said leaning back in her chair and tapping at the yellowing scrolls before her. "These records are hardly the most up to date list of what we have stored here. My predecessor was dogged in expanding our collection, almost to a fault in fact, but he was quite poor at making sure the records kept pace with his acquisitions. That's why, when I took over, I set myself the task of completing the cataloging he completely failed to do. Unfortunately, it's a much larger task than I had originally envisioned. His records were even worse than I thought, and a good half the books kept here are still unlisted."

"So what you're telling me is that you might actually have a copy of this book, but..."

"...but if we do, I don't know where it is," the woman finished for her, then nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid that's precisely it."

Adrasteia felt herself deflating at the news. For a moment she had found thinking that finding another copy of the book might be just that easy; that she would be able to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of Monocles and whatever secret it was he had been killed to keep. Instead now it looked like she was about to fail at the first hurdle.

Taking a deep breath, she blew out a thin stream of hair from between tight lips as she thought about what to do next.

"Is there anyway I could try looking for it?" she said finally. "Search your archives and see if I can find another copy myself?"

The woman behind the desk gave her a gentle smile.

"It really does mean a lot to you to find this thing doesn't it?" she said.

Adrasteia nodded.

"More than you know," she replied.

Still smiling the woman heaved herself back up again.

"Then why don't you come with me," she said setting off through one of the doors that led deeper into the library. Adrasteia followed after feeling her spirits lifting as the larger woman opened a door that connected the hallway they were standing in to the libraries main hall. At the sight of what lay beyond, the meager hope she had been building was dashed all the harder.

The main hall was huge.

While the library was clearly large when viewed from the outside, the relatively unassuming nature of its exterior did a good job of camouflaging its sheer volume. The ceiling overhead was high enough to allow two more people to stand on Adrasteia's shoulders and still not scrape their heads against it. Every inch of space seemed occupied too, with dozens – maybe even hundreds – of shelves and scroll racks, each one filled to bursting point and laid out in such a way that they created an apparent labyrinth of old wood and musty papyrus. Here and there spaces were apparent in the occasional gaps between shelves, each usually filled with a reading table and chairs. A person could loose themselves for days trying to find anything in here, and Adrasteia quickly realised that that was very likely what was about to happen to her.

"As you can see," the big librarian next to her said apologetically, "we do have rather a lot of texts still to catalogue. You are of course welcome to search of the book you're looking for. It may be that we do actually have a copy. If we do, your guess as to where to find it is as good as mine. Are you sure you still want to hunt around for it?"

Adrasteia gave a tired sigh, then made her way over to the nearest shelf and began scanning the titles.

"I don't suppose I have any other option really," she said, feeling her dismay growing as she realised the books were often stacked two or three deep, and that many had had their covers changed due to age and damage. This was not going to be a simple matter of scanning book titles. Her search was going to have to be more thorough, she realised; more exhaustive.

"Well just leave you too it then, deary" the big librarian said. "You've quite a daunting search ahead of you after all. If you need anything, just come running. I'll be at the front desk all day." She turned to leave, then paused.

"Oh, one last thing," she said, turning back to Adrasteia a final time. "Do make sure to put everything back where you find it. Cataloging everything is hard enough without people moving everything around. I'll end up not knowing if I'm coming or going."

With that, she turned away again and made her way out of the room, leaving Adrasteia alone among the stacks.

"You and me both," she muttered as she began to heft down her first stack of books.

* * *

It was hours later, and Adrasteia had found herself making little headway. At first she had assumed the books to be categorised and alphabetised, but it seemed the librarian had probably been underexagerating earlier when she said that her predecessor had not kept the library in any kind of order. Only about a third of the books and scrolls present seemed to be in any kind of real arrangement leaving her to sort through the rest.

Now she was seated at one of the reading desks, surrounded by piles of books and from a nearby set of shelves, and slowly scanning through each of them to try and determine if any were in fact a copy of what she was looking for. It was tedious to point of being mind numbing, and as she worked, she found her thoughts beginning to wander to places she had hoped to avoid. After the news she had received the night before, she had hoped searching for the book would prove an effective distraction, but that was far from the case.

As she reached out for the next book in the pile beside her, she felt a dull ache begin in the back of her throat. Swallowing hard, she placed the book in front of her and opened it, blinking back tears as best she could as she focused on the first few pages.

It was then that she heard the footsteps approaching. Sniffing, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, hoping to wipe any trace that she had been on the verge of crying and looked up. It was Athelis crossing the library toward her.

"Finally," he said as she caught sight of him. "It took forever to find you. I had to corner one of the Oracle's handmaidens back at the temple to find out."

Adrasteia frowned in confusion.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, "I thought you left with the others hours ago?"

"Well you thought wrong," Athelis said, slumping down into a chair opposite her looking angry and frustrated. For the first time he seemed to notice the various books scattered around the table. "What exactly are you doing here anyway? You were never a big reader, even after mother taught you how."

"I could say the same about you!" Adrasteia protested, then laughed. "Do you remember when mom nearly had to tie our hands to the quills when Hetheus came around to teach us."

Athelis nodded with a slight smile. They both had less than pleasant memories of the severe old temple scribe that their mother had paid good coin to teach them to write. Hetheus

"I though the old man was going to kick over your chair when you spilled that ink pot on him."

"Me too!" Adrasteia grinned. "Mom was furious too. I mean she... she..."

Adrasteia trailed off, as memories of her mother clouded her mind, carrying the dull ache of grief with them. How was she supposed to tell him?

Glancing up, she noticed Athelis looking at her quizzically.

"Everything okay?" He said.

"I just need to concentrate is all," she said. "I was looking for another copy of this." She slid the blood-stained book to him. "Callisto and Ithius think it might have secrets that the Followers are trying to protect."

"You mean secrets Pelion is trying to protect." Athelis leaned forward with interest, his concern for her seemingly forgotten exactly that quickly. "Well that's something at least. Making any progress?"

"None," Adrasteia said. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack in here."

"Well then I guess you could use a second pair of hands," he said, standing back up again. "Where do I start?"

"You could make a start on those stacks over there." She motioned to a collection of shelves groaning under the weight of dozens of slab sized tomes. "I hadn't even made a start on them yet."

Athelis nodded and made his way over to them, hefting down a large selection of books and carrying them back over to the table, stacking them up on the floor next to it before seating himself again. He grabbed the top book from the stack and began paging through it then, once he was satisfied that it was not the book they were looking for, he laid it to one side and reached for the next.

The time passed easily at first, each of them working steadily through the piles of books and scrolls stacked around them. They would talk a little every now and then, mostly about things they both remembered from their youth. Occasionally Adrasteia was almost able to forget the years of apart that had so changed them both. Sometimes the conversation would stop as one of them would stand and return some book or other to its original resting place, only to fetch back still more from some other uncatalogued corner of the library so that the search could continue. From the few windows visible from where they were seated, they could see the sun rising, passing across the sky and beginning to fall again and as the day wore on, it began to become apparent that Athelis' patience was wearing thin.

"This is pointless!" He growled in frustration, tossing the latest book he had been checking to one side with such venom that it hit a stack of as yet unchecked books, causing them to totter then topple clear over the side of the table with a series of heavy thuds. "We don't even know if this book we're searching for will even be of any use."

"A man was murdered to keep whatever he had found in it secret," Adrasteia said as patiently as she could manage, rising from the table and stooping to collect the fallen pile of books from where they now lay. "I'd say that makes it pretty..." She trailed off yet again as she noticed one of the books – a particularly large and dusty volume with cracked and yellowing pages – had fallen open somewhere toward its centre, revealing a carefully drawn illustration that tickled some half-formed recollection in the back of her mind.

"...important," she finished, frowning as she reached out picked up the book. The spine had been cracked when it had fallen from the table and she did not want to risk damaging it any further.

"You've found something?" Athelis asked, eyeing the book in her hands as she lifted it to the table.

Adrasteia nodded.

"Maybe," she said. "Not what we were looking for, but still, maybe." Placing the book on the table, she spun it around so that he could see the illustration that had caught her eye. It was of an amulet. The colour of the metal it would have been made of could not be discerned from the simple black ink drawing, but the large obsidian stone that formed its centerpiece was by far its more distinct feature anyway.

"Does this look familiar to you?" She said. "I've seen it before, but I'm not sure where."

Athelis looked down at the book, and for a moment, Adrasteia saw a look of not only recognition but, more importantly, discomfort pass across his face.

"Never seen it before," he said, almost a shade too quickly. "Why? Do you think it's important."

Adrasteia eyed him coolly.

"It could be."

"Does the book say what it is?"

Before he could crane over to read it, Adrasteia turned the book back to face her, her eyes quickly skimming over the text as she tried to parse what had just happened. Why had her brother lied to her?

"It says something about it being part of some kind of ritual," she said, then frowned. "That's odd."

"What is?" Athelis said, leaning forward as he tried the read the now upside-down text.

"The ritual was apparently some kind of rite of purification. According to this, it was performed by a whole bunch of ancient warrior societies as a way to achieve a kind of... kind of... inner calm and focus..." Her eyes flicked back and forth as they devoured the information on the page. "...and it involved Pneuma."

"Pneuma?" Athelis said. "The same stuff the Oracles use? The stuff Callisto was poisoned by?"

Adrasteia nodded, and at the mention of Callisto, a fresh memory surged to the surface and suddenly, clear as day, she knew where she had seen the amulet before.

"And Callisto was wearing one!" She gasped. "I saw it in Tryxis, when she and Ithius saved us from the Spartan patrol. She had it on then. Don't you remember?"

Athelis shook his head, but she could not help noticing that he seemed to be studiously avoiding meeting her gaze as he did so.

"But I don't get it," he said, squinting hard at the text. They had learned to read together, but he had never shown quite the natural aptitude for it that she had. "How does an amulet purify anything? And what does the Pneuma have to do with it?"

"It says it right here," Adrasteia said, placing her finger on the page and tracking the words as she read them out loud. _"And the divine Breath of the Gods shall fill them, driving all that is dark and afeared before it with its cleansing wind. Dark shall be drawn to dark, and thereafter that which was within shall be without, and mettle shall be tested, to the ruin or salvation of those that birthed it."_

"But what does any of that _mean?_ " Athelis growled, his teeth gritted in frustration. Adrasteia glanced down at his hands. They were clenched into fists, his knuckles whitening as he pressed them hard against the surface of the table.

"You lied to me just now, didn't you?" She said, her voice hard and steady. "You've seen this amulet before."

For the first time since she had placed the book on the table in front of them, Athelis looked at her, his face suddenly ashen.

"I... uh..." he began uncertainly. "I mean, I must've done right? We were both in Tryxis together. I saw it the same time you did."

Adrasteia shook her head.

"No," she said as more and more memories came tumbling back through her thoughts as she tried to piece it all together. "There's something more, isn't there? Something you're not telling."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Athelis snapped, but even as he straightened to storm off, Adrasteia was speaking again.

"Callisto wasn't wearing it when she came aboard Drevus' ship," she said, her voice louder now. "And she didn't have it when I found you with her at-" she stopped suddenly as that particular moment fixed in her mind's eye. Ithius and Themistocles had wanted her to go after her brother she remembered; to somehow try and convince him to use his influence with some of the Helots to help get everyone free of the camp they had found themselves trapped in. That had been the first time she saw Callisto, and now she realised, also the first time she had seen the amulet. Callisto had been laid out on an old bed in an abandoned woodsman's cottage, still comatose and ashen skinned from Pneuma poisoning. Athelis had been standing over her and holding something. He had quickly hidden it when she had walked in on him, but he had not been quite quick enough to prevent her seeing it. That something had been the amulet.

"You put it on Callisto, didn't you!" She exclaimed. "She was wearing it because of you!"

Athelis paused, suddenly seeming smaller and more lost than she ever thought she had seen him look before.

"He gave it to me," he said quietly. "He told me it would help; that it was the only thing that could save her."

"Who?" Adrasteia demanded, stepping around the table to confront him. "Who told you?"

"Pelion," was his only answer.

Adrasteia felt sick to her stomach.

"Pelion," she said, her horror growing with each passing moment. "And you believed him?"

"It worked didn't it?" Athelis snapped at her defensively. "She's back, isn't she?"

"But at what cost? Gods Athelis, you know Pelion probably better than any of us. You _know_ he's not to be trusted. Why would you entertain anything he had to say, even for a minute?"

"You couldn't understand," said trying to push past her dismissively.

"I'm getting sick of hearing that excuse!" She moved to block him, to keep him from getting past her. She was going to wring answers from her brother whether he liked it or not! "How can I understand if you won't tell me."

Athelis glared at her.

"You want an explanation then," he growled. "Is that it? You think it will all just be better for both of us if I come right out and say it? Alright then, how about this. I want Pelion dead. And not just some quick and quiet kind of dead either. I want it to be long and lingering, and I want him to know that it was me who killed him."

"So, you put the amulet on Callisto?"

Athelis shook his head.

"Not at first, no. I tried not to use it. I was desperately hoping that I wouldn't need to and that somehow she'd get better without it. But she wasn't getting better and I..." he paused as if not knowing quite how to put into words what it was he was feeling. "...I just..."

"Just what?" Adrasteia pushed hotly. She had a feeling she already knew the answer, and that she did not like what it was, but she wanted to hear him say it all the same.

Athelis sniffed and stared up over her head at something off in the middle distance, his back straight and unbending, as if he were trying to convince himself that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

"I needed her."

Adrasteia could only stare at him, not even sure how she was supposed to feel about what he had just said.

"You needed her?" Was all she could say.

"Yes."

"More than your own family?"

"You were fine without me."

"No we weren't!" Adrasteia finally snapped, her voice rising in fury. "How many times do I have to tell you, we were never okay without you! Mom and Dad, they went to pieces, and I was left sifting through the rubble! I used to lie awake at night thinking that if you just came home, maybe we could still patch things up and be a family again." By now she could feel the tears she had been trying to hold back ever since the night before welling up in her eyes, but she did not care. She wanted to get it out, to finally say everything that had been weighing on her for so long. "I was crushed when dad died," she carried on. "But through it all I remember hoping that maybe you'd learn what had happened, that you'd come home, but you never did. Then mom got sick and I had to join the temple so that she could be cared for. Now she's dying and I don't-"

"Wait, what?"

Adrasteia paused suddenly realising she had gone a little further than she meant to. Athelis was staring at her intently.

"Did you just say mom's dying?" He said.

Adrasteia sniffed and nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Her brother demanded.

"I only found out last night," was her reply. "Aegon told me."

"We've been together all day," Athelis said. "You could've told me any time."

"And I wanted to," she said. "Really, I did, but then we got talking and it felt so nice, like it was the old days again, and I just couldn't. You'd been away so long. I just wanted my brother back, even if only for a moment."

Athelis fell silent for a moment.

"You've seen her since we came back?" He asked.

Adrasteia nodded.

"Yesterday evening after our audience with the Oracle," she paused, not really sure how to continue. "She doesn't look good," was all she could seem to manage, and she winced at just how bad the comment sounded.

Athelis was quiet for a moment.

"What's wrong with her?" He said eventually, his voice leaden and heavy.

"The healers say it started while I was away. They thought it was just a cold at first, but whatever it is, its settled in her lungs and they say she's sinking fast. That's why I asked Callisto to persuade you to stay behind and-"

"You did what!?" Athelis snarled his voice suddenly hot again as he took a threatening step toward her. "You told her to leave me behind? And she agreed!?"

Adrasteia squared her shoulders defiantly. She was not about to let herself be intimidated by her own brother.

"Maybe she thought I was right," she said smartly. "Who'd have thought it. Me and her seeing eye to ey for once."

Athelis fixed her with a steady glare, but did not say anything. Stepping around her, he set off toward the library's main entrance.

"Where are you going?" Adrasteia called after him.

He paused by one of the nearby stacks.

"Our mother," he said tightly. "Where is she?"

"They moved her out to one of care houses outside the city," Adrasteia said. "If whatever she has is infectious, they don't want her spreading it within the walls."

"A death house, you mean?" Athelis said, glancing back over his shoulder at her. "And you let them do this?"

"It's not like I had much of a choice is it?" Adrasteia said. "Temple rules are clear on the matter. They're taking good care of her there."

"If she's dying, not good enough, clearly," Athelis snarled. He was about to start walking again when Adrasteia called out to him.

"Are you going to see her?"

Athelis stopped again for a brief instant.

"I don't know," was all he said, and with that he was gone, leaving Adrasteia alone among the stacks.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Back again. This chapter came a little easier than the previous one, and also, since the first story in this series finally got 3000 views I thought I'd best push through to get this one out as a little celebration. Hope you all enjoy...


	11. Chapter Ten: Messengers

**Chapter Ten: Messengers**

The ride south was set to be a long one, but, from the looks of the empty road stretching out ahead of them over the rolling green hills and wildlands to the south of Delphi, it was also set to be equally uneventful. That meant that before they had even gone an hour's worth of distance, Callisto was already bored out of her skull.

She rode toward the back end of the column, only slightly ahead of the rear guard Barabus had set once they were clear of the occupied lands immediately around Delphi and out into the country proper. Occasionally she would catch one of the Delphians eyeing her warily and when she did, she would shoot them either a wink or a glare depending on how much she felt like upsetting them. Most of the time though, she kept to herself; her gaze fixed on the middle distance as the lands around her began to become more familiar and old memories churned inside her skull.

This main north south highway was a key route for trade between cities such as Sparta and Athens, and was, as a consequence, relatively well-maintained, being patrolled by those with a vested interest in traffic along its length remaining unmolested. As the leader of a bandit army that had often preyed on said traffic, or even the smaller settlements that made their living from those various travelers, Callisto had traveled these lands extensively, but rarely on the highway itself.

Her key tactic in those days had been to emulate Xena. Even at their mightiest, Xena and her army had been more opportunists than cold blooded conquerors. Their main mode of operation had been to raid and pillage, with little ambition beyond the wealth and notoriety they could gain by doing such. They had never shown any true desire to capture and hold territory – though Xena herself had often shown the tactical and strategic acumen to do so if she so desired – and instead seemed to simply delight in the chaos and destruction they sewed in their passing.

When Callisto had begun to lead her own army of bandits, thugs, cutthroats and other assorted ne'er-do-wells, she had attempted to follow in Xena's footsteps as closely as possible. Only by doing so could she hope to convince the world that the recently 'reformed' Warrior Princess had returned to her old ways. That had meant sticking to the back roads and hinterlands, partly to mirror the way Xena had led her own army, but also to avoid a more professional military force such as the Athenians sweeping in from the north and routing her on the spot. The wild hills and valleys, covered in sporadic forests and interrupted by rivers and the occasional rocky bluff had kept her movements obscured, and the more she thought about it as they rode along, the more she remembered how much those days had excited her, and how she had consistently thrilled at the challenge as she had played cat and mouse with those sent out to track her. Back then the game had still been fresh to her, the outcome still unknown.

In hindsight, that outcome had been all but inevitable, and if she were truly honest with herself, Callisto was forced to admit that she had known the way things would end even back then. The life she had lived – the chaos and destruction she had wrought - had only ever been headed one way.

It was that single thought that continued to torment her as they rode south. Could things have been different, she found herself wondering. Once she had believed with the utmost certainty that it could not. With all that happened to her since her resurrection by Zeus and Hades, she was finding it increasingly hard to believe in those same convictions. Time and again she had been confronted by others who had loved and lost much as she had done, and yet none had chosen the path she had. What was it that made people like Gabrielle or Dahlia, Ithius or Barabus, so different to her? How had they been able to resist the urge for revenge that she herself had not?

"Hoping I wouldn't notice you lagging behind?" came Barabus' voice, jolting Callisto back to the present. "Maybe even planning to bolt when you put enough distance between yourself and the rest of us?"

Doing her best to hide her surprise at being caught unawares, she quickly scanned her surroundings. Almost instantly she realised that she had been so caught up in her own thoughts that her horse had slowed to barely a walk, probably on the lookout for a spot to graze, and she had now fallen well behind even the column's rear guard. Barabus had fallen back from the head of the column to meet her and was now seated beside the road as the rear guard trotted by, waiting for her to catch up.

"You think I'd run from _you_?" she covered with a sneer. "Please. If I wanted to leave, I already would have done, and there's precious little you or your little toy soldiers here could do to stop me."

Barabus looked annoyed but he did not rise to the taunting.

"Then what were you doing back here exactly?" he said. "I never gave you permission to fall out of formation."

Callisto felt something inside her snap at that. She had been trying to play nice since that morning, doing her best to toe the line the entire time. Now though; now she'd had enough. She drew her horse up beside his and flashed him a sickly-sweet smile.

"Refresh my memory," she said, tapping at her chin as if trying to recall something. "If I remember rightly it was your own Oracle that gave me this mission, wasn't it? Funny that, huh? That she'd trust someone like me with defending Delphi and not you, one of her very best toadying sycophants. What could it mean I wonder?" She leaned over in her saddle, her voice turning low and taunting. "Could it be she sees the same thing I do when she looks at you; just another lackey? Another pompous stuffed-shirt, incapable of truly protecting anyone, even the ones he loves most?"

Barabus sat his saddle stiffly, his fists clenched tight around his mount's reins.

"Now refresh _my_ memory," he replied, his voice icy cold. "What happened to your family again?"

The tauning look on Callisto's face vanished in an instant and instead she sat back in her saddle, glaring at him furiously.

"Guess I'm not the only one who has trouble keeping their loved ones alive," Barabus finished.

"Is there some kind of problem here?" It was Ithius' voice, calm but sharp and cutting into the stretched-taught air between the two.

"No problems at all," Callisto called back without taking her eyes off the Delphian captain. "We were just clearing up a little conflict of authority is all."

"And that conflict would be...?"

"Who has it and who doesn't," Barabus said, turning to face Ithius. As he looked away the tension between them vanished in an instant.

"Well if you've managed to clear that up, perhaps one of you can tell me what the plan is going forward," Ithius said riding up between them. "The sun's already starting to set and unless we want to announce to everyone within a half dozen miles or so that we're out here, we might want to try and find somewhere sheltered to make camp for the night."

"Way ahead of you," Callisto said. "There's a village not more than an hour or two's ride from here, a league or so down an old trail and through some woodland."

"Arros," Barabus agreed. "I was thinking of it too. It's enough off the beaten track that I sincerely doubt Demosthenes and his men will have any reason to go near it. It should be a safe place to hole up for the night, if the locals will have us that is."

"And why wouldn't they have us?" Callisto answered sarcastically.

"Oh, let me think," Barabus said, rising to the bait this time. "Could it be that it's one of the few villages in the region you didn't try and burn to the ground, and that maybe – just maybe – the people who live there might want to keep it that way." He shot Callisto a sideways look. "I never did quite understand why you didn't attack it. You hit just about every other settlement in the area. Why not Arros?"

"For the same reasons we're going there now," Callisto answered matter-of-factly. "It was too small and out of the way. My men wanted loot and pillage and Arros wasn't really worth the effort. It wasn't high profile enough either. I wanted the villages I targeted to make a statement. If I'd burned some little backwater like Arros, who'd have cared?"

"Ah yes," Barabus said, nodding sagely as he did so. "The practical concerns of a marauder and her thugs. I'm sure the villagers of Arros are truly grateful that their village was small enough to escape your notice." He shook his head in disgust. "Sometimes I wonder how your kind even sleep at night."

"Don't you go playing high and mighty with me," Callisto fired back. "If you and those like you spent more time out on the roads keeping the peace, instead of cooped up like frightened children behind your safe city walls, people like Xena and I wouldn't even exist, and my home wouldn't have been burned to the ground."

"Enough," Ithius snapped sharply, "the pair of you!" He glanced up at the sky. "We don't have time for this. The longer we stand here arguing the more daylight we lose."

He turned to Barabus.

"Can we make it to Arros before sunset?"

Barabus scrubbed at his jaw as he considered the plan, then finally nodded.

"If we leave now, I think so."

"You should get your men to loosen formation," Callisto said. "We've been saving the horses most of the day. A quicker ride now will hardly kill them and it's more important for us to reach shelter before dark than to hold to a tight marching column."

Barabus looked at her for a moment, his expression strangely unreadable, then finally he nodded.

"I'll make the arrangements," he said, turning his horse back toward the column and booting it to a quick canter that would see catching up to his men in double time.

"What?" Callisto called at his departing back. "No snide comments? No petty one upmanship? I have to say, I'm disappointed that you'd roll over so quickly, Barabus."

He paused for a moment, seemingly stung by her words, then glanced back over his shoulder at her.

"I make it a point not to disagree with people when they are actually talking sense," his voice was stiff and brittle. "No matter who those people might be."

* * *

It took them just under an hour to cover the distance between the main road and Arros. At first, they had proceeded a little further down the highway until Callisto and several guardsmen recognised one or two local landmarks. From there, they struck out West, riding in a loose procession parallel to a line of undulating, scrub covered hillsides. It was along this line of hills where the trail that Callisto remembered as leading straight toward Arros started. Narrow and muddy, it weaved its way through the hills, following a series of fresh water streams that cut a network of valleys through the sloping terrain. The horses had to progress single file here, and their otherwise steady pace was briefly slowed until they had navigated the valleys, emerging on the other side of the hills and onto the grass covered plains beyond.

Almost immediately they could see something was wrong. Off in the distance, roughly half way between themselves and the horizon, a line of dense woodland stretched for miles in either direction. From somewhere just beyond that, several plombs of smoke could be seen billowing upward, merging and condensing to form a heavy black cloud that hung, dark and foreboding, against the bruised evening sky.

The whole column slowly drew to a halt, the men around Callisto shifting nervously in their saddles as they stared toward the towering cloud of smoke. Callisto herself felt a similar sense of unease, although she could not place her finger on why. In the past a sight like this would have barely even registered to her. Truth be told, she would probably have taken some kind of perverse pleasure at witnessing it. Now though, the rolling cloud of smoke had tied a knot of tension in her gut and, try as she might, she could not seem to undo it.

"Well that's not good," she said, trying to keep her voice completely deadpan as she drew her horse up beside Ithius and Barabus.

"No," Ithius agreed. "No, it's most definitely not."

Next to them Barabus gave an annoyed grunt.

"That's all you have to say?" he growled, tugging at his mount's reins in irritation. "So, how then do you propose we proceed?"

Callisto was about to make a pointed jab about how he suddenly seemed more than happy to let them take the lead when there might actually be some real danger just around the corner, but before she could do so, Ithius spoke up instead.

"With caution," he said with a nod toward the trees. "We have no way of knowing what might have happened over there." He paused for a moment, studying the surrounding country side warily. "Or if those who caused it are still in the area."

"They won't be," Callisto said, surprising herself by how distant she sounded. She gripped her horse's reins tightly to keep from fidgeting as she felt both Barabus and Ithius looking at her.

"What makes you say that?" Barabus said, his eyes narrowing.

Callisto shrugged.

"Common sense," she said, trying to keep her voice as brazen as always so as to mask the growing discomfort she was feeling. "But we're certainly not going to find out if we just sit here all day. I'll ride on ahead to check if it's safe or not."

Already Barabus was shaking his head.

"You've got some kind of problem with me scouting ahead now?" She raised an eyebrow at him and would have had her hands on her hips too, except she had to keep them on her horse's reins. The animal was growing increasingly skittish as it sensed her growing agitation.

"Apart from the fact that I have perfectly capable scouts of my own?"

"Which would be fine if these 'scouts' of yours weren't a bunch of hairy-palmed, clubfooted oafs."

"Well then, let me see; what other possible reason might I have for not wanting you riding off on your own?"

Callisto smiled playfully back at him.

"You've only got one reason? I can count them all for you if you need a tally." As she spoke, she started checking off fingers one at a time. "So first we have the wholesale murder and pillage that I used to engage in. There's the fact that your good self kept me locked up in a dark damp cell for six months, then obviously, there was the time I tried to kill the Oracle and after that there's-"

"I'll go with her," Ithius cut in, rolling his eyes at their constant bickering. "Will that satisfy you?"

"Being that I trust you almost as little as I trust-" Barabus began.

"Then we all go together," Ithius said sharply in a hard voice that brooked no further argument. "The three of us. Right now." And with that, he started off down the trail.

Callisto and Barabus just looked at each other.

"Guess that settles that then," Callisto said, and Barabus nodded.

"I guess it does at that," he grunted, looking her up and down with a considering eye as he did so. Finally, he sighed as if at last coming to a difficult decision. "You should go on ahead." There was an air of surrender about him. "I'm going to lead the men on behind you at enough distance that they can easily fall back if we this turns out to be an ambush."

"You're sure about letting me out of your sight?" Callisto grinned mockingly at him. "Afterall, we both know that even a few minutes alone is more than enough time for me to slip away if I want to."

"Just go," Barabus growled tightly. "Before I change my mind."

Callisto let out a short sharp laugh, then booted her horse in its flanks, setting it to a quick trot so that she could quickly catch up to Ithius who was already a good fifty metres or more away. As she rode up behind him, the former Helot leader twisted to face her, frowning when he saw that Barabus was not present.

"Where's our good-but-irrascible captain?" he asked as she drew level with him.

"He's had a change of heart," she replied. "Says he trusts me implicitly and is even thinking of naming his next child Callisto."

Ithius just looked at her steadily, causing Callisto to stick her tongue out at him.

"Spoil my fun why don't you," she grunted, then hitched her thumb over her shoulder back in the direction she had come from. "He's decided to lead the men on in behind us. He wants them to be able to fall back if we're walking into an ambush."

"And to use us to bait out such an ambush too no doubt," Ithius said, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. Finally, he sighed and straightened in his saddle again. "Well, at least we've got a little peace and quiet for a while." He twisted in his saddle to regard her levelly. "Speaking of peace and quiet, while we've got a minute, I wanted to ask what you meant just now."

Callisto frowned at him.

"What do you mean 'what I meant'?"

"Before," Ithius said, nodding back toward the Delphian column, "when you said that whoever caused the smoke had already moved on. How did you know that?"

Callisto felt her stomach churn.

"I told you," she said. "Common sense."

"And I don't buy it," he said. "I know you well enough to know when you're hiding something. This whole situation has you spooked and I want to know why."

Callisto fell silent, staring past him and off toward the trees.

"I guess you're right," she said eventually. "I didn't _know_ it. Not for certain anyway. It was just a feeling I had. Something about all this doesn't sit right with me."

"Such as?" Ithius probed as they began to approach the edge of the woodland that the trail passed through.

"Why would anyone attack Arros?" she said. She did not expect much of a response, and Ithius did not disappoint, only shrugging as he waited for the answer he seemed to already know was coming.

"Even I didn't bother with it," she continued, working through the logic in her head. "Demosthenes has far bigger fish to fry. That means it was someone else that attacked it and that they had something to gain by doing so."

"But you said it's a backwater. Who would gain anything by attacking a place like that?"

Callisto shrugged.

"The kinds of people that its best for most to steer clear of," she said as they continued on. They were under the woodland canopy now, the light of dusk fading to just above darkness as their horses plodded slowly along. The only sounds that could be heard were their own voices and the crunch of fallen autumn leaves beneath shod hooves. "I had an army of them at that my back, and if I'd let them, they would have been even more indiscriminate in their attacks than I was."

Ithius gave a grunt.

"The more I hear about you and your escapades in the 'good old days' the more and more glad I am that I didn't know you back then."

"And so you should be," Callisto said tugging sharply on her reins and bringing her horse to a standstill. "The person you're talking to now, well let's just say I've become a pussycat by comparison."

She glanced around their surroundings. The trail ran up a wide and shallow slope and then disappeared over the crest. From just over the hillock a dull orange glow could be seen, and in the failing daylight it cast long shadows that cut through the haze of smoke that was already drifting in the air.

"We're getting close," she said as she started to dismount from her horse. There was an eerie quiet all about them. So oppressive was it that she almost winced when her boots crunched loudly as they crushed the dead leaves beneath her. "Better to go on foot from here."

Ithius was already following her lead, dismounting and loosely hitching his mount to a nearby tree, purely to keep the animal from bolting if things took a turn for the worse. Together the two of them started up the slope, keeping low and sticking close to the trees so as to avoid being seen by anyone who might be watching the rise as they crested it.

They needn't have bothered.

When they finally topped the slope, they found themselves staring down on a grim tableu that would not have looked out of place in Tartarus itself. What had once been the village of Arros was now little more than a smouldering ruin, partially obscured by heavy banks of smoke that drifted and swirled between the remains of a hundred or so burned out buildings. Here and there a few places had escaped the earlier conflagration, their walls scorched and soot-blackened, but still standing nevertheless. They were few and far between however, and the vast majority of buildings had been left as little more than charred husks; their beams, walls, thatch and other timbers all collapsed, now forming dark skeletal outlines against the smoke.

What most drew the eye however, was not the burned-out village itself. Instead, that dubious honor went to the wanton carnage scattered between said buildings, and the hideous rows of makeshift crucifixes that had been erected on the open fields between where Callisto and Ithius now crouched and the village itself, each and every one of them occupied.

Callisto felt as if someone had just poured ice water through her veins, and she found herself rising from her crouch involuntarily as she stared at the rows upon rows of crucifixes. Someone was toying with her. They had to be. That was the only explanation. Inside her mind, something dark and serpentine uncurled itself, giggling in satisfaction at her sudden unease.

"Are you alright?"

Callisto blinked, then turned to stare at Ithius blankly, as if he were speaking to her from somewhere far away.

"Huh?"

"Are you alright?" Ithius repeated, his brow furrowed with worry. "You look like someone just walked over your grave."

"Or dug it up," Callisto grunted, turning back to stare at the ruin that was Arros.

Ithius shot her a sideways glance.

"This all reminds you of something?"

"It's nothing," Callisto said a little too quickly, giving a dismissive snort at the end, perhaps more to convince herself than Ithius that it truly was nothing. "I'm fine. Now come on. We didn't come all this way just to sit and stare. We need to find out what exactly happened here."

"You don't think we should wait here for back up?" Ithius nodded toward the village. "There could be anyone down there."

Callisto was already starting down the slope, moving at a jog and abandoning any previous pretense at stealth while her heart hammered inside her chest.

"I already told you, there's no one down there," she called back to him, completely unable to tear her gaze away from the crucifixes and the ruined village beyond.

"And I still want to know how it is that you're so sure of that," Ithius replied. The sound of rustling leaves and breaking twigs behind her indicated he had chosen to follow rather than wait behind.

"Because I just know, alright!" she snapped back at him as the two of them reached the bottom of the slope. "Now are we going to see if anyone survived or would you prefer to discuss it some more?"

She was not tired, but her breath was coming more rapidly now as she found herself in among the crucified bodies. She stood stock still, taking in every detail – every clue – that she could. The bodies were all completely still, each one hanging limply from the crossed wood they had been afixed to, their heads drooped and their knees bent under their own weight. Some looked almost peaceful, their faces at almost completely at rest. There were others that were less so, their death masks twisted by rictus sneers from the pain and terror they had experienced in their final moments. There were dozens upon dozens of them like this. Perhaps more than a hundred. They were dressed like locals, in simple farming or work clothes and nearly all bore some kind of injuries that they must have experienced before they were strung up. Some were bruised and battered, others marked sword or knife wounds, and it was as she stared at these injuries that Callisto realised how each and every one of them must have already been dead or dying when they had been hoisted onto the crucifixes. These crucifixions had not been meant as a punishment, that much was clear.

They had been a meant as a display.

She could feel bile in her throat and her stomach was churning as her eyes moved from one body to the next. There was a fury rising in her, but try as she might, she could not look away from the rows upon rows of neatly strung up corpses. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. This could not stand. She had to know who had done this, and why.

"Spartans," Ithius said behind her.

"What was that?" Callisto snapped, finally managing to turn aside and glare back at him.

"Over there," he pointed past her, down the field of crucifixes toward the village. Callisto twisted back again, narrowing her eyes as she looked in the direction he was pointing. He was right. South from where they were standing, over by the village's northern edge, some of the bodies on the crucifixes were not locals. Instead they wore the boiled black leather breastplates of the Spartan army.

Without a word, Callisto started forward again, making her way through the field that had been churned to thick mulch by the hundreds of people that must have walked across it in the last day or so. What little daylight there was remaining was fading fast now, chased away by a cool northward breeze that blew the smoke from the village out across the field in great billowing clouds. Callisto ignored the acrid taste it left in her mouth as she walked, eventually arriving at the edge of the village proper with Ithius only a few paces behind her.

"They're Sentos' men," she said, pointing to one of the crucified soldiers who, besides his armour, was dressed in a red cloak.

Ithius nodded grimly, then he frowned, staring over her head as if noticing something in the distance.

"There's more in the village," he said, his voice cracking slightly at what he saw.

Callisto's blood was practically boiling as she turned, teeth gritted, to see for herself what he was talking about. Now, staring down the main thoroughfare that ran from the village's northern edge to its southern border, she felt her heart skip a beat. At the main village square, less than three hundred paces from where she was standing, a battle had taken place. Men, dressed in the same crimson capes and black armour as those on the crucifixes at her back, lay where they had fallen, their number roughly equivalent to the number needed to form a phalanx. Around them were other men, dressed in rag tag sets of armour that had clearly been pieced together from whatever materials their owners had been able to lay their hands on. The Spartans had gone down fighting, that much was clear, and they had taken a large number of their enemies with them.

"Looks like a bandit raid," Ithius said. "Sentos and his men must have been trying to defend the village."

"I don't think so," Callisto replied, crouching low in the dirt and studying the tracks made by the hundreds of pairs of feet that had churned so much of the mud in the village square to mulch. "The Spartan tracks come right in over the tracks made by the villagers fighting against the bandits. Sentos and his men arrived late to this particular slaughter."

"But that would mean that the bandits stayed to fight them," Ithius said, turning and considering the village around them. "And then after that they stayed even longer to string everyone up to crucifixes."

Callisto nodded, as she straightened again, taking in more details in among the carngage that surrounded them. The more she saw, the more she was able to piece together what had taken place here. Ultimately however, it was not the 'how' that was bothering her so much, but instead the 'why'.

Still frustrated by the situation, she thrust her finger in the direction of a number of nearby bodies.

"How about those?" she said. "I'm curious to see what you make of them."

Ithius looked in the direction she was pointing, standing silently for a moment before finally speaking.

"They took the heads," he said flatly.

"And why would they do that?" Callisto pushed, her voice barely more than a snarl that caused Ithius to shoot her a thoughtful look.

"Well?" she snapped at him, frustrated by his silence. "I'm waiting."

"Why ask me?" he replied in that too-even voice that never failed to irritate her. "You clearly already know the answer."

Callisto gave an annoyed growl as she turned to square up to him. "They only took a few of them," she snapped. "That suggests they only needed a few, probably to prove that they had actually killed these Spartans."

"Prove to who?" Ithius replied.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"You think Demosthenes is behind this?"

"Your little friend Sentos betrayed him. These are Sentos' men." Callisto shrugged. "Two and two together equals four, not three or five."

Ithius shook his head.

"That doesn't seem right," he said. "I know Demosthenes. He's arrogant to a fault and takes the Spartan code of discipline very seriously. He'd see someone like Sentos turning on him as a personal insult. He wouldn't want to send lowly bandits to do his dirty work. He'd be out for blood himself."

"I didn't realise honour bound Spartan kings were the type to stage coups," Callisto countered archly. "Maybe you don't know Demosthenes quite as well as you think you do. And besides, he has his invasion of the rest of Greece to worry about. I'd have thought that might just take priority over some little internal rivalry with a lowly captain well beneath him in the overall pecking order."

Ithius scrubbed at his chin thoughtfully.

"That still doesn't explain the bandits," he said, causing Callisto to look at him as if he had just claimed the sky had turned pink.

"I mean why they would agree to something like this in the first place," Ithius continued by way of explanation. "Bandits and warbands like these people aren't really known for their bravery or valour. Normally these kinds of men run when faced with a Spartan phalanx marching into the middle of one of their raids. The idea that you could just pay them to stay and fight..." he shook his head. "Seems like more risk than the reward would warrant. And then there's the crucifixes. They don't add up either. Taking heads to prove you did the deed makes sense in a grim kind of way, but why would you then spend so much time and effort stringing up the rest?"

"And that's the real question, isn't it?"

Both Ithius and Callisto turned at the sound of the familiar voice to see Barabus, unmounted like themselves, picking his way through the wreckage of the village, a couple of the Delphian troops just behind him, their face blanched white at what they had seen on the way in.

"Not the 'how' of all of this, but the 'why'." He drew up in front of them, fixing Callisto with a hard stare as he did so. "Maybe you could answer it for us? This does look remarkably like your handy work after all."

Next to Callisto, Ithius frowned.

"What do you mean by that?" he said. Barabus glanced at him briefly before returning his gaze to Callisto.

"Your friend doesn't seem to quite understand what it is he's seeing here. Does he really not know, or you just afraid to tell him?"

Callisto's top lip curled upward in a sneer but she said nothing.

"This again?" Ithius said, gesturing at the carnage surrounding them. "You think she did this? How? She's been with us the entire time."

"You don't have to be leading an attack to be its cause," Barabus said, still not taking his eyes off Callisto. "You let her off the ship before you arrived at Delphi. She was out of your sight for close to a day; more than enough time to pass on a little message to some of the roaming marauders in these parts that still remain loyal to her. Who's to say she's not even working with Demosthenes?"

"But to what end?" Ithius pressed.

"Does there even need to be one?" Barabus snapped, finally turning to glare at the other man as he thrust an accusing finger in Callisto's direction. "She's a sadist and a murderer. She delights in playing games with other peoples' lives. It's all she knows and she will never change, do you understand? Never!"

Before anyone could react, Callisto had reached out and grabbed Barabus' wrist. Still holding it, she stepped around him, twisting his arm up behind his back until his elbow was ready to snap. Trying to turn with her to release the pressure, the larger man stepped awkwardly, losing his balance and allowing Callisto to easily sweep his legs out from under him and send him crashing to the ground. Landing on his front, he rolled quickly onto his back, but Callisto already had her sword drawn with the tip of it hovering mere inches from Barabus' throat. The Delphians began to draw their own weapons almost immediately, but Callisto hissed and bared her teeth at them.

"Don't," she growled. "I'm not going to hurt him, but I do think it's high time your captain and I cleared up a few things, and violence seems to be the only way of getting through to him."

Turning her attention back to the man, sprawled in the mud beneath her with her boot on his chest and her sword at his throat, she had expected to feel anger, fury even, after all the things he had said. Instead, all she felt was a strange kind of chill emptiness. It was a feeling that had been growing more and more common with her in recent weeks.

"Remember this moment, Barabus," she said, her voice harder than granite. "There is no way you can punish me that I haven't already experienced, and no pain you can inflict that I haven't already suffered ten times worse." She tilted her head, pushing the sword blade down so that the tip rested on his adam's apple. "But _I_ can end you, any time or place I please. I can make it quick and painless, or slow and agonising. I can make you scream until your lungs bleed and have you beg me to send you to join your son, and there is nothing you nor anyone else can do to stop me."

Taking her eyes from the prone Delphian captain at her feet, she glanced around at the bodies of the raiders, the memories of her own time at the head of a similar army clear and strong even now, so many years later. They had never been pleasant memories – very few of her memories could be described as such – but they had never discomfited so much as they did today.

Slowly she lowered her sword and removed her boot from the Barabus' chest.

"But I won't," she said as he scrambled hurriedly back to his feet. "Because no matter how evil you might think I am, and how much you think I did this..." she paused and glanced at Ithius who had been watching the whole scene unfold with a strange look on his face. "...I didn't."

Barabus, who had been reaching for his own sword, paused at that final part, his hand gripped tightly at around the weapon's hilt.

"And you expect me to just take your word for it?" he croaked, still apparently struggling for breath.

"I couldn't care less whether you believe me or not," Callisto replied with a shrug. "It makes precious little difference in the long run, and let's face it, it would be an uphill struggle even without all the evidence to the contrary, but let me posit this last little point to you..." She gestured to the bodies all around them. "...if I was doing this to get at Sentos, wouldn't I make a big display that I'd got him?"

"You don't think crucifying an entire village and then massacring a Spartan phalanx is a display?" Barabus said incredulously.

"Oh, it absolutely is," Callisto nodded. "But not the one you think." She took a step toward him. "We came here to find ourselves a Spartan captain. Now tell me, do you see a Spartan captain lying around here anywhere, because I certainly don't."

"She's right," Ithius said. As she had been speaking, he had clearly been scanning the bodies all about them. "There's no sign of Sentos here."

Barabus stared at her a moment longer, his hand still on his sword hilt, then slowly he turned, taking in the carnage before finally turning back to face her with an annoyed look on his face.

"That proves nothing," he said. "Demosthenes could have wanted him alive."

"And when exactly have I cared what other people wanted?" Callisto shot back hotly. "If I had been after Sentos, I'd have given his body pride of place in all of this, not hidden it away where no one could find it."

Barabus stood silently, processing everything she was saying before finally straightening and letting his hand fall away from his sword.

"Alright," he said. "Then where is he?"

Callisto gave an irritated shrug.

"Do I have to do all the thinking around here?" she said. "How should I know? You're the one with half an army at your back. Why don't you set them to searching before we lose the light?"

Barabus grunted, sniffed, and turned to one of the soldiers next to him, muttering something in his ear. The other man nodded then turned and hurried off back in the direction he had come from.

"We'll make camp here for the night," Barabus said, turning back to both Callisto and Ithius. "I've ordered some of the men to search what's left of the village. The rest I've assigned to funerary detail. It may seem like a waste of effort to you, but I won't leave those people trussed up out there as food for the crows."

Callisto gave a dismissive snort.

"Do whatever it is you need to satisfy your morals." she sneered. "Now it's been a long day, and much as I'm sure some of these farmhands you like to call soldiers would enjoy being shirtless in front of me, I honestly have no desire to spend the entire evening watching a bunch of sweaty country bumpkins hauling corpses about, so if you really don't mind, I'm off to find myself some peace and quiet." With that, she span on her heel and before anyone could say anything else, she had set off at a brisk stride, making her way past the bodies and out toward the edge of the village.

"There's still something you haven't answered!" Barabus called after her in vexation. "If what you're saying is true, and you weren't behind this, then who in Tartarus was?"

"That's exactly what I plan to find out!" she shouted back.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here's the latest update. I'm trickling along slowly with these, mainly because I had to sell the laptop I was using to work on them when I was out and about. Not being able to work on them remotely means I have to find the time at home, which isn't easy with a couple of little ones running about the place. Still, I don't plan to give up on this one. I've come too far and written too much to surrender now!

Hope you all enjoy the update!


	12. Chapter Eleven: Only Ever Worse

**Chapter Eleven: Only Ever Worse**

Barabus' runner had clearly passed his Captain's orders to the troops in double quick time. By the time Callisto had reached the edge of the village and was beginning to cross back to the trees of the forest across the field of crucified villagers, the Delphian troops were already beginning to emerge from among the trees themselves, descending into the village slowly and cautiously. They wore a variety of different expressions, and each expression told Callisto a little more about the man wearing it. Some looked outraged, incensed by the casual violence on display around Arros. Others had gone white as sheets, and one or two of the least hardy had even taken the time to evacuate the contents of their stomachs. Callisto stepped carefully around those men. The last thing she needed right now was to have to spend half the night trying to scrub away the stench of vomit from her boots. Finally, there were some men who simply looked grim and determined. Callisto – had she actually had any money to hand – would have bet down to her last Dinar that these were the men who had seen combat before, and were thus accustomed to sights such as this, although perhaps none quite so deliberately sadistic.

As she moved by the line of men, stalking irritably in the opposite direction, she found herself thinking if any of those sterner individuals had been among the forces sent to track her down back in the day. Again, she would wager a small fortune that many of them had. How must that make them feel, she wondered; to one day have her as an enemy, and the next as some kind of strange and unlikely ally. She shrugged to herself as she neared the line of trees, not really caring either way, but still finding it strangely difficult to ignore the way some of the men were glaring at her. She gave an uncomfortable swallow, her throat feeling dry and scratchy all of a sudden, but kept her back straight and her shoulders squared nevertheless until she was clear of them.

The forest beyond the tree line was quiet, and growing darker by the minute as twilight gradually faded to night. Overhead, a light breeze rustled branches and leaves alike as the first fingers of silvery moonlight began to reach down through the canopy to the forest floor. It did not take Callisto long to retrace her steps back to the small clearing where she and Ithius had hitched their horses, and sure enough, the animals were still there when she came upon it. Strangely, both looked nervous, their tales twitching and swishing uncomfortably, and her own mount even shying sideways slightly at her approach.

"So, you have a problem with me now too, do you?" she said, pausing to eye the animal askance with her hands on her hips. The horse snorted and tossed its head anxiously but made no further attempt to move away from her.

"That's better," she nodded, her voice rasping slightly against her dry throat. Rubbing at her collarbone in irritation, she crossed to her saddle, trying to fish out her water skin from the supply pack. It was only when she found it that she noticed the wetness of the surrounding gear it was wedged in among. Frowning, she looked closer, peering at her mount's flanks in the dark. A thin trickle of water was running from beneath her supply pack and down the horse's haunch and leg to the ground where it had already soaked the dead leaves and dirt there and was now beginning to form a shallow puddle.

With a grunt she reached up and pulled the waterskin free, studying it closely. There was a small slash in the side of it, barely noticeable really but enough to allow the contents to leak out. Fingering the edges of the slash, she could not help but note how clean the edges of the cut were. This was not simple wear and tear. Someone had taken a knife to the skin, most likely some disgruntled soldier of Barabus' looking to get some petty vengeance.

With a quiet curse, she tossed the waterskin aside. Glancing about, she remembered a small fresh water stream a little further into the trees that she and Ithius had crossed on their way in. Without pause, she set out again, crossing back out of the clearing and into the trees once more. The moon was riding higher in the sky now, and its light was beginning to cast long shadows as it filtered down through the boughs and branches above. Those same shadows seemed to dance and twist with every gust of wind and Callisto found her thoughts turning to Mortius as she walked. Could he be behind the attack on Arros? Were all the crucifixes and burned houses some kind of twisted game he was playing with her?

She paused for a moment. Somewhere nearby she could hear the sound of running water. The stream must not be far now.

Walking again, she shook her head. Mortius was not behind this. Was he capable of manipulation? Almost certainly. Would he use death and carnage to achieve his ends? Absolutely. But this kind of wanton death dealing? It all seemed a bit too blood and thunder for him and was too specifically targeted at her to boot. If there was one thing Mortius had made perfectly clear in their few dealings so far, it was that - to his mind - she was beneath him, and barely worthy of attention. What had been done to Arros however, had clearly been meant for her in particular to see. If that was true however, then it left her drawing a blank as to who else might be behind this. Pelion was insidious and calculating, but this degree of violence did not seem the kind of tactics he would indulge in, and Demosthenes was, simply put, too unimaginative to go after her in such a manner.

Still wracking her brains for an answer, she finally emerged from between a pair of birch trees to find herself standing on the dirt banks of the narrow stream she had been searching for. With a loud sniff, she crossed to the edge of the bank and knelt over the water, cupping her hands together and scooping it up so that she could take a long, luxurious gulp. The cool, fresh stream water tasted almost sweet to her parched throat and tongue, and she took three more hungry swallows of it, some wasted water running in rivulets down either side of her chin.

Finally sated, she rocked back on her ankles, wet hands resting against her leather skirt as her mind turned back to the question of Arros and who exactly had been behind its sacking...

…And that was when her own voice spoke to her.

"Quite the puzzle, isn't it?" it said, sounding both innocent and somehow taunting at the same time.

Callisto was on her feet in an instant, her hand flying to the sword at her back as her eyes darted wildly about, trying to find the source of the voice. When they did, what she see saw was less surprising than it should have been. There was another her standing just beyond the opposite stream bank, and in among the trees, the moonlit shadows of the overhead branches crawling spiderlike across her features.

Callisto shook her head and blinked hard as if that would somehow make the vision before her disappear.

The other her cocked her head and smiled in a way that was supposed to look innocent, but instead succeeded only in making Callisto's skin crawl.

"Oh sweety," the doppleganger said, "you look confused. What's the matter? Was there something in the water?"

"You're not here," Callisto snarled, gritting her teeth as hazy, half remembered feelings from her Pneuma induced vision coma stirred to the surface of her mind. She could not recall seeing something like this before, but those distant, unfocused recollections told her that despite her lack of memory, this was not the first time she had experienced something like this. "You're not even real," she hissed.

The other her gave a frustrated sigh. "Again?" She folded her arms in irritation. "Really? I thought we'd already established this before, I'm as real as you, because, in the end, I am you."

"You're right," Callisto retorted sharply. "We have been through this before, and you're the same now as you were then; just some piece of a Pneuma fever dream and nothing more."

"If that were true, then why am I here now?" the other glanced from side to side, carefully studying their surroundings. "This all looks real to me. Face it deary, all that toxic cesspool ever did was show you things the way they truly are. It opened a doorway into the blackest reaches of your soul, and surprise surprise, it was me that came stepping right on through. Too late to try and close it now, and besides, why would you want to? I'm here to help after all."

Callisto gave a bitter laugh. "You can't help me," she sneered. "You never could. You're the reason I'm in this mess in the first place, and now you're trying to tell me that you can get me out of it again?"

"It's what I promised, isn't it?" the other her said, lacing her fingers together, then stretching them high above her head in what looked like some kind of disinterested limbering exercise. "I'm like you. I keep my promises." Suddenly she became more attentive, dropping the pretense of boredom and fixing Callisto with an intense stare. "I followed you back, through fire and fury, to give you exactly what you want; to take away the heartache and the hurt, to finally give you peace."

"Peace?" Callisto retorted with a disgusted snort. "We both know there's no peace for us. Dying didn't work, and there was something dark waiting for us beyond even oblivion. Peace was never something within our grasp. Not that we even deserve it."

The doppleganger's lip curled upward in a snarl. "There you go again with that maudlin self-pity. When was it that you became so pathetic?" She scrubbed a hand through her hair in frustration. "So, what now then? You think training with that insipid lug, Ithius will give you what it is you're searching for? That saving Delphi will earn you forgiveness? You don't deserve any of that, let alone the place in Elysium you were offered." The other her clenched her fists tightly at her sides, but she never moved from where she was standing. "If you really think that either is a solution, then you're nothing more than a deluded fool!"

Callisto gritted her teeth as she snarled back, "So, what? You think you have the answer then?"

"Of course I do!" the other her said, raising her hands pleadingly to Callisto as her voice shifted from fury to imploring in a single moment. "All you have to do is let me back in, the way you used to. I can make you strong again! Not this confused, moralistic mess you're becoming. Open your soul back up to me and together we can destroy Delphi, Athens, Sparta, and any others that stand in our way. We can light the fire that will level all around us to the ground, then cast all our hate and misery into the flames to burn away to nothing, and when all is done, finally, we'll have the peace we both want!"

Callisto stood silently for a long while, staring at the doppleganger's outstretched hands. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, and the blood was roaring inside her head. She would be lying if she said what the doppleganger was offering was not tempting. It all seemed so simple after all, like it had been in the beginning; fire and fury and a single overriding purpose. But in the end, it had not remained that way, and she had been naïve to believe that it ever could. The world was just not as black and white as she had tried to make it. No. Ultimately her way had not been the answer. She knew that now, but what other ways might there be? That, she had yet to find out.

"You say you're me," she said finally.

The other her nodded eagerly.

"Then you should know, like I do, that you're not the answer," Callisto said, turning her back on the doppleganger as she did so, and trying desperately hard to keep her voice level. In the end, she was unable to stop it from cracking ever so slightly. "You never made me stronger, or better. You only ever made me worse."

From behind her she heard the doppleganger laugh darkly.

"They really have you believing all of this don't they?" she said. "Zeus, Dahlia, Leonidas, that fool, Ithius. They have you thinking you're something special; another Xena, out to save the world from itself." Her voice dropped low. "We both know that's a lie. The truth is, you're nothing. Less than nothing even. I _am_ you, and you can't deny me forever. You just watch. Soon you'll see how you can never escape the things you did, or the person that you truly are. There is no redemption for us, only destruction. You might want to think on that before I come calling again."

And with that, the doppleganger fell silent.

Callisto stood silently for a moment, the only sounds on the stream bank coming from the breeze in the branches overhead and the soft gurgle of running water. Her blood pulsed and surged inside her to the rhythm of her thundering heartbeat as she felt pure, unadulterated hate for her own sneering visage raging in her gut. Finally, summoning up the will inside her, she turned to once more face the vision that tormented her so.

She was alone, the place where her doppleganger had been standing now completely vacant.

"Callisto?"

She spun on the spot to catch Ithius emerging from the trees to her left, his face writ with concern.

"What do you want?" she snapped.

"I was just a little worried is all. You'd been gone quite a while and it was starting to get dark. I wanted to see if you were okay."

"You're not my big, strapping saviour, Ithius," she grunted dismissively. "I can take care of myself."

Ithius' frown deepened. "You sure you're okay? While I was looking for you, I heard voices. It sounded like you were talking to yourself."

Callisto paused at that. Had the vision seemed so real to her that she had actually been talking out loud? Even by her own less than exemplary standard, having a full-blown argument with herself did lead to questions about her own sanity. Had the pneuma really left her that damaged? Or was the doppleganger right? Had she always been that way, and the pneuma just the agent for that for that terrible realisation?

"I'm fine," she said trying to calm herself but unable to keep the edge out of her voice. "Just working through some things is all."

"Like what happened in the village?"

Callisto skewered Ithius with a harsh glare, but the other man did not even flinch.

"Something about what happened down there bothered you more than you were letting on," he continued. "Barabus might think you're immune to pain and that you're still the same heartless killer he remembers from before, but I know that that's not true. So..." he took a step forward. "...Care to share what it is that's got you so worked up?"

"No."

Ithius sighed.

"Okay then," he said, straightening slightly as he spoke. "I was trying to do this the easy way, but you're not really leaving me much of a choice." Reaching up, he pulled the long sword strapped to his back free with a sibilant hiss of rasping leather. "Hard way it is." He nodded at the hilt of her own weapon, sticking up over her shoulder in a similar manner to his own. "Draw your sword."

Callisto's scowled at him. "What?"

"Draw. Your. Sword," Ithius repeated, punctuating each word as he did so. "Or are you afraid to?"

"I fear nothing."

"Then this shouldn't be an issue should it?"

Callisto groaned.

"You really want to do this? There's a village of people down there, all of them dead, along with possibly the one hope Delphi might've had to survive Demosthenes' attack with them, and you think _now_ is the best time to hand my ass to me yet again?"

" _You_ asked _me_ for help," Ithius replied evenly.

"To teach me how to beat Mortius," Callisto fired back hotly. "Not to trounce me over and over again while regurgitating some nonsense, pseudo warrior wisdom you picked up from a crotchety old Spartan King."

"That 'psuedo warrior wisdom' you're talking about is the martial basis for the teachings of centuries worth of some Greece's finest warriors," Ithius said, his voice still infuriatingly calm. "Like it or not, Mortius is schooled in that same wisdom. You want to beat him, you need to be centred, like he is. These 'issues' of yours – whatever they might be – are getting in the way of that." He nodded at her sword again. "You don't solve your problems with words and talking. You never have. You solve them with the point of your blade, so draw your sword, and let's work through them in a way that might actually do you some good."

Grinding her teeth against each other so hard that the sound was almost audible, Callisto reached up and yanked her own sword violently from its scabbard.

"If you want to do this," she growled, "Just know, I'm not going to hold back."

"I'll be the judge of if you are or not," was Ithius' cool reply. "Now come at me!"

Lowering the tip of her sword so that it was aimed squarely at his gut, Callisto let out an ear-piercing scream of fury and charged straight at him. Ithius responded with a neat, last minute side step that saw Callisto have to twist hard to keep him in view. In that brief instance of imbalance, Ithius surged in from her right, his sword raining down blows as she was forced back onto the defensive.

"Don't go low," he instructed levelly as she was forced to give ground before him. "It opens you up."

Callisto's jaw ached with tension, but she did her best to focus, and follow his instructions. Moving to a more balanced guard, that would allow her to quickly parry the overhead strikes he was making.

"Not high enough," Ithius barked. "You're being too cautious. You know what you need to do. Go high and you can finish me!"

Callisto felt her lips curling up involuntarily, as she took a moment's pause in his attacks to hop back a pace or too. Free from his relentless assault, she shifted to a high stance and ran forward at him, matching his own overhead attack. Ithius braced for the strike, then at the last possible instant he ducked under the blade, twisting his own so that the flat side caught Callisto in a stinging slap across her midriff.

"And you're dead," he said stepping back from her as Callisto rounded on him, red faced and with fury shining in her eyes. "Sliced open as a matter of fact."

"You told me to go high!" she snapped. "I did what you said and you just used it to counter me."

Ithius nodded. "Yes, I did."

"You cheated!"

Ithius raised an eyebrow at her. "Since when were you concerned with fair play?"

"You're supposed to be teaching me!" she protested. "Not trying to win at any cost."

"It's a fight, Callisto. Those who aren't willing to do anything to will inevitably end up dead when they run up against someone who is."

"So that was the lesson then? To fight dirty?"

Ithius sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose in the way he always seemed to when he was having difficulty getting through to her.

"Why _did_ you do what I told you to?" he asked after a moment.

Still holding her sword at her side, Callisto placed her other hand on her hip and glared back at him fiercely.

"Because you told me to do it if I wanted to win," she said.

Ithius shook his head.

"That's not what I said. I told you that you knew what to do and I meant it. You knew how to win that fight. Instinctively, you knew, but you pulled back from it. Why?"

Callisto did not answer his question. She set her mouth in a tight line and moved her feet apart, raising her sword one handed as she did so.

"I want to go again," she said.

"Only if you're willing to do what's necessary to win." His voice was cold and hard this time. "Don't just do what I tell you to, and don't hold back. I mean it this time. I want to see _you_ in this fight. The real you. Not the façade you keep trying to hide behind." Slowly, he raised his own sword again and began to circle her. Callisto mirrored him, her blade ready and waiting to intercept his. She had turned almost a complete three sixty when suddenly, the tip of his sword lashed out like the head of a striking snake. Callisto parried it easily, and settled back into tracking him once more. The next time he struck, she parried it the same way, and again the time after that.

"Why so defensive," Ithius needled her. "We both know that that's not who you are." Suddenly he was lunging at her, his sword whipping in from her left over and over again in an attempt to draw her into shifting her guard so that he could create an opening on her right. She'd seen him use this tactic before, and knew that after three or four parries he would probably make a move on her right. She would strike then.

One, parry.

Two, parry.

Three, parry.

She braced herself to launch onto the offensive, but something inside her made her hesitant to commit to the attack.

Four, parry.

Instead of moving to take advantage of the opening she knew was coming, she took a slight step further left, opening the distance between herself and Ithius and causing his predicted right-hand strike to fall short. For a moment he was over balanced but again, she could not bring herself to take advantage of the opening. Rather than press in on him, she dropped back, holding her guard in preparation for whatever might come next. He was playing with her, she told herself, and she did not plan on being caught out again.

Ithius straightened, his sword coming back up into a guard as he stepped away from her and began to circle back in the opposite direction.

"Still not seeing her," he said, his voice taking on a cutting edge now, one which Callisto almost immediately recognised as being an emulation of her own. "What does it take to bring her out to play, huh? I want to see the Callisto they tell stories about; the _real_ Callisto, not this shell of a person in front of me. I want to see the woman who had such fire she single-handedly bested a prison full of guards, fought the God of War himself to a standstill, and clawed her way back from the very depths of Hades. I know that that Callisto could trounce me in a heartbeat. Where is she now? Whatever happened to her?"

Callisto's jaw worked silently as she felt her stomach churning at his words. She could feel the urge building inside her, to throw herself at him and open him up so that he looked like freshly slaughtered pig, his entrails spilled across the ground and steaming in the chill night air. Instead, she squeezed the hilt of her sword all the tighter and continued to circle with him.

"Come on," Ithius taunted again, quite obviously trying to ape her now. "This is getting dull!" He paused in his seemingly ceaseless circling for a moment, tilting his head as if considering her. "I know!" he snapped in sudden revelation. "Why don't we do a bit of make believe. Spice this fight up a little. What do you say to that?"

Callisto swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "You don't want to do this Ithius," she said seriously, her tone low and cold. "Trust me. You _really_ don't want to do this."

"Oh, but I _really really_ do," Ithius shot back, his voice filled with venom. "This is your chance, Callisto; everyone that ever wronged you, right here in front of you. Demosthenes or Pelion, Ares or Hercules; you can take your pick if that's what you want."

Callisto could feel her chest heaving as he spoke, anger burning hot and hard in her gut as he taunted her with all those names. She knew what was coming next.

"Any of your enemies, here and ready to fight. That's got to be too good to resist right? If you want, I can even be Xe-"

Before he could even finish the other woman's name, something inside Callisto snapped. Suddenly all she could see was a burning village with Xena at the heart of it, crucified bodies all around her and each one staring down at Callisto with dead, accusing eyes.

Unable to hold herself back any longer, she let forth a horrific cry, more anguished and pained than her usual furious banshee scream, and leapt at Ithius, her sword blade moving like Zeus' own lightning as it flashed in the light of the pale moon. The two swords met with a stupendous clatter as both Callisto and Ithius traded rapid fire blows in an effort to decide the balance of power in the fight. It took only moments for it to become clear that, this time, Ithius was on the losing side. Callisto hammered his guard hard, her sword moving quickly from low to high, left to right and back again. Cross cuts and slashes were interspersed by probing jabs and feints until she had him almost with his back to one of the nearby trees. A moment later and he had nowhere left to go. His back was pressed firmly against the tree's trunk as blow after blow fell upon him, her sword chipping off bark and twigs as she hacked at him, his own sword barely moving quick enough to keep her at bay.

Callisto knew she should end the fight - that to all intents and purposes she had won - but for some reason, she could not make her body do what she wanted it to. All she could see in her mind's eye was that flaming village, full of crucified bodies, with Xena at its centre.

Only now it was not Xena anymore. Instead it was her, standing and grinning back at her with hate filled eyes and outstretched arms.

Callisto gave a start, and suddenly she was back in the present, her sword arcing downward to deliver a savage slice that would open Ithius up from left shoulder to right hip. In that moment, the anger surging inside her vanished as if it has never been and she paused, her sword halting its swing mere centimetres from Ithius' collarbone.

The other man did not waste the opportunity. Before Callisto could recover her wits, his fist flew out, catching her hard in the gut and doubling her over as the blow knocked the wind out of her. An instant later, he had dropped low, catching her legs in a vicious sweep that sent her crashing hard onto her back. Grunting, she tried to stand, only to find Ithius above her, his boot pressed firmly on her sword arm's wrist with just enough pressure to make her wince.

"I think I've seen all I need to," he panted, leaning down and prying her sword from unresisting fingers to toss it aside.

For the first time, Callisto noted the sweat that was pouring off him, despite the chill of the night's air. She was barely even damp. "Everything you hoped it would be?" she sneered back at him.

"More like what I feared it would be," Ithius replied, tilting his head at her as he did so. "If I let you up, are you going to go for me again?"

"What would be the point?" Callisto snapped back. "I think I just proved I can best you."

Ithius tilted an eyebrow at her again. "Best me? Remind me which one of us it is on our back with their sword nowhere near them." Finally, he stepped back, shifting his sword to his left hand and offering her his right. "The winner is the one left standing, Callisto. Never forget that."

Still annoyed, Callisto batted it aside and clambered back to her feet unaided. "Don't you try and swing this," she said, brushing herself down and straightening her leathers as she did so. "We both know I had you dead to rights."

"But you didn't finish me. Instead you choked when the time came and left yourself open."

"I didn't choke," Callisto snapped back defensively. "I don't choke. We were sparring. The fight was over and I'd won."

Ithius shook his head at her. "You don't spar, Callisto. The kill is what you know and what you love. That's how you end things. You had me right where you wanted; could have finished me any time you wished, but you didn't." He fixed her with a questioning stare, not even needing to speak.

Callisto opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. She just stood silently, straining, but ultimately unable, to find a reason.

"It was what happened back in the village wasn't it," Ithius said softly.

Callisto glared at him. "I already told you I don't want to talk about it."

"Then we can go another round if you want," Ithius said, a little more lightly this time.

Callisto raised her eyebrows at him, and Ithius gave her a rare smile.

"Obviously I'd rather not," he said, massaging his collar bone at the point where she had almost cleaved him in two. "Despite what you might think, I do actually value my own hide.

Callisto continued to glare at him, but for some reason, she could not seem to find the anger she had had before. Even the thought of all those people strung up on crucifixes, of raging fire, and of Xena glorying in it all, only left her cold and numb. With a final sigh of surrender she turned and crossed to the edge of the stream, seating herself on a large, lichen-covered rock that was half buried on the stream bank. After she had seated herself, she hunched forward, arms resting on her knees as she eyed him levelly. "What do you know about Xena?"

Ithius shrugged.

"As much as most other Greeks, I imagine," he said, moving to seat himself beside her on the rock. "She's from Amphipolis originally; made a bit of a name for herself in certain less than savoury circles. Then she upped and vanished for a couple of years. Later, she finally reappears out of the east, leading a whole army and seemingly determined to carve out a fiefdom for herself as some kind of roving warlord. Eventually she runs up against Hercules and after that, she seemed to have a change of heart, abandoning her army and setting out on her own to become the champion you went up against." He paused for a moment, as if considering carefully what he was about to say. "And somewhere in among all of that, she burned down your home."

Normally that last part would have stoked the fires of hate burning inside Callisto all the hotter. Now though, like before, it only left her feeling hollow.

No longer looking at Ithius, she tilted her head back and gazed up at the moon overhead. She remembered sitting under moons like this with Xena and Gabrielle several times. Strangely, she did not recall ever having felt more at peace than she had those nights in the company of her sworn enemies.

"Why is it I always seem to end up having heart to hearts on nights like these?" she muttered, more to herself than to Ithius.

She glanced at him and sighed. "What you just said, that's what I knew starting out as well," she said. "Maybe a little less even. When I first set out to get my revenge, you have to remember, Xena was still out there as a killer; one that was hated and feared, not hailed and praised. I knew that if I was going to stand a chance of beating someone like that, I would have to be just like her, and that meant learning all about her. There are things I know about Xena that even she doesn't suspect I do. She's amazing really. Xena has lived enough for a dozen life times, and so much of who and what she is, is wrapped up in it all.

"You said she vanished only to come back out of the east, and there's a reason for that. It's one that took me quite a bit of time to uncover, as it's something I don't think she talks about much. You see, just before she upped and disappeared, Xena had been plying her murdering trade as a pirate on the seas of the Aegean. On one particularly lucrative raid she managed to net herself quite the catch, a minor Roman noble by the name of Caesar. Julius Caesar if I remember correctly. Anyhow, she put him up for a king's ransom, which the Romans ultimately paid. Here the story gets a little unclear though. Some say Caesar, furious at his treatment, hunted Xena down in revenge. Others say that he had made a deal with her, which he then went back on. Whatever the truth, it doesn't really matter. The result is the same. Caesar caught up to Xena and her crew, and had them all crucified."

Ithius had been silent while she was speaking, but now he spoke up.

"Like what happened in the village?"

Callisto still did not take her eyes off the moon, but she nodded all the same.

"Just like what happened in the village," she said, a hint of bitterness creeping back into her voice. "You have to understand, I spent years learning about Xena, training to be just like her in every conceivable way, and when I was ready, I was going to find her, and I was going to kill her." Even now, after all these years, the next part still stung when Callisto thought of it. "Then it happened. Xena went and had herself an epiphany. No longer was she going to be the scourge of Greece, Ares' one chosen warrior. Oh no. Now she was going to be some heroic do-gooder, wandering from town to town with some simpering little red headed bag of virtue in tow, as if that would somehow undo all the evil she had done, just by wanting it hard enough!"

She paused for moment, catching herself before her voice and anger could rise. She licked her lips, sniffed and continued on. "That was the last straw I think, the thing that finally broke me beyond the point where I could be repaired, or even wanted to be for that matter. I couldn't allow her to do what she was doing. I couldn't just stand back and watch while she tried to make amends. I had to remind the world exactly what she was, and show them all that no matter what she did to try and change things, she could never be forgiven. And so, I raised an army of my own and set about doing my best to pretend to be her. Who better after all? I'd spent so long learning how to beat her, actually becoming her was simplicity in itself, almost poetic you might say."

She twisted where she was sitting and looked Ithius square in the eye. His face was attentive, but she could see the worry and revulsion behind his eyes. For some reason, she found that more hurtful than she had thought she would. "When I started attacking villages with my bandit army, I ordered those that weren't killed in the fighting and that couldn't escape crucified. It was my little message to Xena that I knew her, perhaps better than she knew herself, and that I was coming for her."

With that she fell silent, waiting for Ithius to respond. He did not for a long time, instead seemingly sitting and considering everything she had just said. "And you think that this is the same?" he said eventually, his voice almost self-consciously neutral. "That someone is trying to emulate you, the same way you emulated Xena, and that this is all some kind of message for you?"

Callisto grunted and scrubbed a hand through her hair. "When you put it like that it does sound more than a little crazy, doesn't it?"

"Maybe." Ithius frowned, studying her carefully all the while. "Who might know that much about you?"

Callisto shrugged. "It doesn't have to be anyone I know. Who was I to Xena? Nobody. Just another angry little girl among all the others she left orphaned in her wake." She paused, then let out a long, low sigh. "And so here we are again, right back where I started." She twirled a finger in the air. "Full circle."

Ithius cocked an eyebrow at her. "You're blaming yourself for what was done here?"

"Shouldn't I be?" Callisto sneered back. "Isn't self-flagellation for their sins exactly what all repentant little do gooders do?"

Ithius gave an amused grunt. "If they are indeed _their_ sins, absolutely," he said, "and I'm not saying you don't have plenty to atone for – you do – but you never seem to get the balance quite right." He pointed off into the trees, presumably in the direction of the village. "What was done down there was terrible, monstrous even, but it wasn't you who did it. Whoever it was who killed those people, whether they dress it up to like you're the one responsible or not, the simple truth of that matter is that it's no one else's crime but their own and, in the end, they are the ones who will suffer for it."

Callisto sat quietly for a while, turning over his words in her head. There was logic to what he was saying, no doubt about it, but he did not know the half of it. There was so much she had done; so much that could not be pardoned or excused. If he knew even a half of it all, he would run a mile in the opposite direction rather than so much as glance at her. No, Ithius had it wrong, and the vision of herself had it right.

" _You can never escape the things you did, or the person that you truly are."_

Those words echoed over and over in her mind, and no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to be rid of them or all that they implied.

She opened her mouth to say something to Ithius, but before she could, they both turned at the dry cracking of twigs and rustling underbrush coming from just off in the trees. Someone else was coming their way.

Callisto's hand went instinctively to her sword, and she saw Ithius' do the same, but before either of them could draw steel, a cluster of branches parted, and a young Delphian guardsman emerged from the trees, with a fellow not far behind him. Therus and Maretes were their names if she remembered rightly. They were both eyeing her warily as they stepped out onto the stream bank and Ithius stood and moved between her and them in a single, smooth motion. Something about the manner in which he moved made Callisto grit her teeth. Did he honestly think she needed his protection?

"Can I help you boys with something?" she said, standing and moving to Ithius' side, shooting him and irritated glance as she did so.

"Captain Barabus sent us to find you," the one called Therus said. Or was it Maretes? The two looked so much alike that she could not be sure.

"Really?" Callisto tilted her head and crossed her arms expectantly. "And let me guess; he wants you to bring me to him, right?"

The one she thought was Maretes nodded. "He does, yes."

"And did he tell you to say please when you asked?"

Therus swallowed nervously. To his credit, when he spoke, his voice only cracked a little. "He didn't tell us to ask."

"Ah, I see," Callisto nodded in mock understanding. "So, this is an order then."

It wasn't a question, but the two men both nodded at the same time, glancing at each other as they did so, as if them being in agreement would somehow lend strength to their position. "It is," Therus said.

Callisto glanced at Ithius, who seemed to be trying hard to stifle a grin at the two men's obvious discomfort. "I tell you what," She said, turning back to them with one of her too-sweet smiles that immediately had the men shifting uncomfortably in their boots. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to go running back to your Captain, tails between your legs like the good little dogs that you are, and tell him that I am not like you and won't come running when he takes it upon himself to bark out commands. Come tomorrow morning, when you all breaks camp, I will be there ready to march, the same as today. Until then, I am to be left alone. If he wants to speak with me, he can come up here to do so. Now, does that sound agreeable to you?"

The two men glanced at each other. "Well actually..." Therus began, only to have Maretes speak at the same time.

"...it's actually about the Spartans. The ones that were ambushed in the village."

Callisto and Ithius both frowned.

"What about them?" Callisto said.

"It's their leader. You said his name was Sentos?"

Ithius nodded.

"Yes. What about him?"

"Well... um..." Therus said, clearly discomfited by having Callisto glaring at him expectantly. "...we think we might have found him."

* * *

They had only been gone from the village a little while, an hour at most, but as Callisto and Ithius made their way back down, Callisto was forced to admit that while she might not like Barabus, he did at least have his troops well in hand. In that short amount of time, his men had already managed to cut down the majority of the bodies out on the crucifixes and begun building several large funeral pyres on to which they were starting to pile the corpses. It may not have been the most respectful way to handle the dead, but it was certainly better than leaving them strung up as carrion.

Before long, they had passed beyond the village outskirts and back into the village proper. There, the sight was much the same; more funeral pyres, here stacked with the bodies of Sentos' fallen Spartans. As usual, Callisto kept her back rigid, and her eyes straight ahead toward where Therus and Maretes were leading them. She could see a group of soldiers standing together, clustered around a particularly grizzled looking veteran – and the closest thing to a healer they had, Callisto suspected – who was in turn kneeling over a prone figure laid out on some sheets scavenged from the nearby buildings. Barabus was there too, although slightly away from the rest of the group, talking quietly with a separate pair of weary looking troops.

As they drew nearer, she could instantly see that the prone man was indeed Sentos. He was unconscious, and had been placed on his front, armour cast off to one side, then stripped to the waist. Even from this distance, Callisto could see the fresh knife wound in his back, that Barabus' 'healer' was currently doing his best to stitch shut. From the looks of the wound, the dagger that had struck him had been long and thin. Her hand drifted toward the similar dagger she carried at her waist as the queasy feeling in her stomach grew. Besides the stab wound, there was heavy bruising down the Spartan Captain's right side, stemming from what looked to be a couple of broken ribs.

"...really did a number on him," one of Barabus' men was saying as they approached. "It's a miracle he's still-"

"Breathing?" Callisto offered as they approached, causing all eyes to turn to her. She flashed them a dark grin. "If he were awake, I doubt he'd see it that way."

"You're saying he wouldn't want to have survived?" Therus said, with a look on his face equal parts both horror and astonishment.

"Spartans come home with their shields," Ithius said, kneeling over the fallen man with obvious concern. "or on them. Sentos was the only survivor of the battle of Thermopylae. He lost his king there, and now he's the only survivor of this massacre too. When he comes to, I'm pretty sure he's going to wish he was dead." He looked up gravely at Barabus' healer. " _Is_ he going to come to?"

The soldier looked at Ithius then back at the man laid out before him, all the while scratching at the greying stubble that covered his jaw. "Hard to say," he said at last. "He's strong, no doubt. Probably the only reason he's still alive, truth be told, but he's taken a lot of punishment, and then there's the blood loss. He'd managed to staunch some of it himself, but it looks like he lost consciousness not long after."

"Where did you find him?" Callisto asked.

"In one of the houses nearby the battlefield." This came from Barabus, who had broken off from his separate conversation and was now making his way back over toward them. "He was propped up in the kitchen area. Someone had clearly helped him inside then left him there."

"One of his own, no doubt," Callisto said, looking back toward Sentos. "Probably wanted to make sure at least someone got out of this alive."

"We should head back," Ithius said emphatically, straightening as he did so. "Come first light, we should make our way back to Delphi."

Barabus was already shaking his head. "We're not going back."

"I'm sorry?" Ithius' reply was one of genuine affront.

"I said we're not going back to Delphi. Not yet at any rate."

"Care to explain why?" Callisto interjected, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she spoke. There was something Barabus was not telling them. "The only reason we were out here in the first place was to find Sentos and his men." She turned on the spot arms spread wide to encompass the carnage that was the day before's battlefield. "I'd say mission accomplished, wouldn't you?"

Next to her, Ithius pointed at where Sentos was laying. "This man is injured. Seriously injured. If we want him to live, let alone be able to tell us exactly what went on here, our best chance is to get him back to Delphi as soon as possible."

"Normally I would agree with you," Barabus replied coolly. "Unfortunately, the situation has become a little more complicated than that."

"You know something, don't you?" Callisto said, voicing her suspicions. "Something you haven't told us yet."

Barabus' eyes flicked to her and then back to Ithius. "Several of my scouts have just reported back. They've informed me that they came across a Spartan detachment not half a league from here."

"How many men?" Callisto said cautiously.

"Enough to form two phalanxes," Barabus replied matter-of-factly. "More than enough to have dealt out what was done here."

Callisto had to admit, it sounded plausible. The village streets were narrow. It would have only taken a portion of one phalanx to pin Sentos' men in place from the front, allowing the rest of the first phalanx to hit Sentos' flanks while the second full phalanx moved in from the rear. Still, there was something about that strategy that did not sound right to her. It just did not sound like the Spartan tactics she knew. "You want to march on them, don't you?" she said.

"The scouts report that they are at camp, with a minimal guard in place," Barabus replied. "A perfect opportunity for us to act out some much needed justice and thin Demosthenes' numbers, wouldn't you say."

"I wouldn't, no. They'll be breaking camp come morning, and I seriously doubt your men are good enough to take down one Spartan phalanx on the march, let alone two."

"Which is precisely why I don't plan to wait for them to break camp." As he spoke, Barabus turned and gestured to one of the scouts he had been speaking to. "Spread the word among the men. We march tonight, now, under cover of darkness. With luck, they will never know what hit them."

"And if you're unlucky, there's three more detachments camped over the next hill that your scouts never even saw, and that will come running at the first sounds of a scuffle," Callisto jeered. She turned to face Ithius. "If he wants to play tactical genius, I say let him. You and I can take Sentos back to Delphi while he's busy getting himself and all his men killed."

Ithius did not say anything; a fact that gave Callisto pause. She was about to press him when Barabus spoke up behind her.

"I'm afraid I can't allow that," he said evenly. Already a number of his troops were moving to surround them both, swords unlimbered. Callisto wasted no time in rounding on him once more.

"Are you serious?" she demanded angrily. "You're honestly going to try and take me prisoner again?"

Barabus shook his head. "Not if I don't have to," he said. "but after everything that's happened here and with Spartan troops so close at hand, I'd be a fool to let the pair of you go galivanting off about the country side, especially with one of Demosthenes' sworn enemies in tow. This is a real opportunity to do some damage. If you are truly as opposed to Demosthenes as you claim, surely you can see that?"

"Sorry," Callisto shook her head at him. "No dice. Night attacks are risky proposition at the best of times and you're talking about trying to carry one out against a force that's not only as large, or larger than yours, but one that's better trained as well. Raids can work at night, but a full blown assault, in formation? All it takes is one sentry to spot you and your advantage vanishes."

Barabus folded his arms tightly across his chest.

"And if we move at night, the chances of us being discovered are far less," he said simply. "There are always risks in war. I thought someone as uncaring about others as you would be more open to taking them." He turned on his heel and began to walk off into the village, no doubt to help gather up his troops in preparation for the night's march. "The Oracle has given me no command over you, and even if she had, I doubt you would obey them anyway. Help me, don't help me, that is entirely your choice, but know this; I will not allow you or your friend to jeopardize this plan." He left that last statement hanging in the air as he strode off into the gathering night time gloom.

Callisto could have strangled him. Why could she not get through to him that his 'plan' was idiotic, and maybe even suicidal?

"A fat lot of good you were!" she snapped, rounding sharply on Ithius as she spoke. "I thought you'd have my back on this!"

Ithius took a deep breath as if summoning up some kind of inner strength for the argument he knew was coming. "If I agreed with you wholeheartedly, I would have."

Callisto's eyes widened in surprise. "Tell me you're not seriously considering going along with him on this?" she said. "You know as well as me that he can't hope to match Spartans on the open field. Even with the element of surprise, it will be an uphill battle, and if there's one thing Delphi can't afford right now, it's to lose a good chunk of its fighting men before Demosthenes even arrives in force."

Ithius raised his hands in an attempt to cool her temper. "Just hear me out okay," he said. "I agree with you. This is not a good plan..."

"Saying Ares likes a good sword fight would be less of an understatement," Callisto mocked, but Ithius soldiered on regardless.

"...but," he continued, unperturbed, "you're not going to change Barabus' mind on this. His duty is to defend Delphi."

"This is _not_ about defending Delphi," Callisto protested. "This is about him making up for what happened with me by collecting the scalps now that he should've back then."

"Almost certainly true," Ithius nodded, "Regret is a powerful motivator, as is the need to see justice done. We both know this, you probably best of all." He paused briefly to let his words sink in before continuing. "Also, try and think of it this way; we aren't going to get what we want, so we should try to make the best of what it is we're actually faced with. If we leave, Barabus is likely to get himself into more trouble than he can reliably handle. If we stay, maybe – just maybe, mind – we can at least help him avoid getting mauled in whatever battle he ultimately chooses to fight."

Callisto could feel her teeth grinding off each other in abject frustration. In front of her, Ithius seemed to be waiting expectantly. "What about Sentos?" she grunted eventually, and the other man let out a visible sigh of relief now that she was apparently won over, however grudgingly that might actually be.

"I think he'll be okay," he said glancing over to where the Spartan captain was still laid out and being tended by the older soldier. "Barabus' man seems to know what he's about. If we find a wagon and some blankets to keep him warm, we can bring probably bring him along and he shouldn't be too much the worse for wear. Hopefully he'll even become lucid enough for us to get some answers from."

Callisto gave another dissatisfied, but affirmative grunt, then scrubbed a hand through her hair in annoyance. "Well what are we standing around for?" she said. "Let's go and see if we can scrounge up a wagon from somewhere."

Ithius gave a slight smile and a nod as the two of them made their way off between the buildings.

"Do you know the one thing I never expected would be so difficult about being a Xena-style goody-goody-two-shoes?" Callisto said as they walked.

Ithius glanced at her. "No," he said, obviously playing along with her. "What would that be?"

"Having to actually listen to people when they start making sense," was her sour reply.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another delay with this chapter. At this point I'm going to stop apologising, as it's probably just starting to become meaningless. The story is, I think, just going to take a little time to crack. I'm not giving up though and I do plan to see it through to the bitter end. Still, I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope to be back with more updates soon.


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